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Can your business still operate?

If not, it probably means that you do not have a Business Continuity Plan. This is an essential tool for your business as it is the procedure that you will use in time of a crisis, that includes information intended to ensure the ability of the services provided to continue in the event of a serious business interruption.
The roles and responsibilities of individuals are detailed, as are the tasks that should be followed to ensure an effective response to an adverse situation.
The objectives of the Business Continuity Plan are as follows:


• Safety and welfare of employees, visitors and the public are protected at all times


• The impact of the incident on the local community and the environment is minimised


• Continue to deliver crucial services to your customers


• The impact of any incident on your business is brought under control and minimised.


• Quick and appropriate response is made to any adverse situation that may arise.


• Fast and accurate assessment and verification of the potential impacts of the situation.


• Matching the degree and nature of the response to the potential impact.


• Clear and appropriate communication being made with management, employees and customers


The business continuity plan is designed to provide a framework for a structured response to any practicably foreseeable incident resulting in actual potential harm, damage or injury to people, the environment or assets associated with the business.


The business continuity plan is written assuming numerous scenarios associated with the operation of the business ranging from total loss of the facility through to lesser incidents that can be managed through reference to the relevant sections of the plan and utilisation of the recovery strategies. A key part of the business continuity plan is the assessment of key risks for the business that assesses the likelihood, potential severity and possible mitigations for the risks specific to the business, and prior consideration of potential alternative providers for key capabilities.
The business continuity plan is intended to provide task information relating to the emergency response only.

Personal Goals that Inspire and Motivate

Personal Goals that Inspire and Motivate

Are you feeling motivated to set some strong goals for this year? Write down those New Year’s resolutions and get going, right? Most people write down lofty resolutions that they think they should want and rarely stick to them, losing motivation and focus within three weeks of their “good intentions.”

This is a brand-new year of limitless possibilities. Do you want to:

Increase your income?
Write a book?
Attract a relationship?
Start a new business?
Become a professional speaker?
Have more personal time?
Take a really great holiday?

I have a gut feeling it is going to be a GREAT year, a BIG SUCCESS year. So, forget writing down resolutions. They don’t work. In fact, the whole idea doesn’t

 really inspire action. So, lets change that.

Start thinking about 3-5 things you want, really want for yourself this year. Not what you should want, or what you think would please others. Dream a little. Think big. What are you passionate about? Entertain several ideas that make you smile, excite you, make you giggle, make you feel really good inside, no holds barred. Remove all mental barriers to holding these ideas clearly in your mind.

Now, put your attention fully on one of the things you want for yourself this year. Visualise and see yourself already there, living it! Creative visualisation is a powerful tool of attraction. Our minds cannot tell the difference between something real and something intensely imagined. Hold that picture in your mind. (Do this daily!)

Does this picture excite you – make you want to have it?

How would your life change if you got (achieved) this one thing you really want?

What would you have in your life that you don’t have now?

Now, the next step is very important. You must decide to go for it. Choose to have what you really want NOW, not someday or tomorrow. NOW. Say YES to yourself instead of saying no. Making the decision fuels your intent to take action.

3 Tips to Get on Track

1. On paper, clearly describe the 3-5 things you really want. I suggest using statements beginning with the phrase” I intend to”. Don’t use “I want”, “I hope for”, “I wish to”, “I’d like”, “I desire” etc. as these are too wishy-washy. Taking a stand with strong definitive statements reflects your commitment to succeed. (This first step is important in creating your road map to achieving your goals. If you don’t define the results you want, how do you know where you are going?). Feel like being creative? Make a collage or dream board for a visual aid in keeping your focus.

2. Moving forward, break down your action steps into smaller steps over a shorter time period like 30 days. For example: your goal is to increase your income, your first step may be to explore options to generate more money. Another step may be to look at your skills and talents for further ideas. A third step may be choosing something you have always wanted to do, something that you love that has the potential for additional income. Maybe it’s a total change of career. The first month may be devoted to doing research and personal exploration.

3. Identify potential obstacles and struggles that could prevent you from reaching your goals. Develop strategies to keep yourself motivated and focused such as reading and listening to positive materials, surrounding yourself with encouraging, uplifting people, joining a mastermind group. HIRE A COACH! Note: let go of using the “money excuse” that you can’t afford to get what you want. Invest in your success. It costs money to make money. How much do you think NO is costing you to stay where you are?

5 Tips to Stay on Track

1. Resolve unfinished business. Either clear the past (make apologies, speak your mind, forgive someone or yourself) and let it go.

2. Stay strong, if you are feeling FEAR. Bring your attention back to the present. Fear creates uncertainty, worrisome and anxiety producing thoughts. (“What if” thinking, Am I going to be okay?) Fear looks at the future and worse case scenarios. Focus on past successes for confidence.

3. Eliminate negativity. Notice the chatter in your head. How do your emotions speak to you inside? What you think affects how you view a situation. Ever heard the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy? Your viewpoint affects your decisions and actions; therefore, your attitude directly affects the outcome. Take a look at the people you associate with. Are they uplifting or do they bring you down? Be selective about who you are with, being around consistently negative or fearful people is draining and disheartening.

4. Keep up your self-care. Taking good care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is a key factor in staying strong and focused under pressure.

5. Celebrate along the way. Taking the time to recognise measurable successes motivates continual commitment to your goals.

“The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximise your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit.” Jim Rohn

How Does Motivation Work?

Learning how motivation works will help you to accept responsibility for your behaviour, for your actions and positive attitude. In reality motivation comes from a person’s belief, which helps them to achieve their goal. Purpose, Desire, Direction and Dedication are the qualities necessary to experience real motivation.

People motivate themselves by understanding their needs and wants. It could be Tangible Gifts, Rewards or Intangible growth, Appreciation, Recognition and a lot more, as it varies from person to person. How does motivation work in your case? If you Understand how motivation works for you, then your Internal Motivation will drive you to achieve your goals and lead you toward success.

People motivate themselves by inculcating in themselves, the belief responsible for actions and behaviour and creating a vision that helps them to outweigh the challenges that might come before them and accept their responsibilities in life. Lack of motivation brings life to a standstill, failure or fear of failure demotivates people and their pattern of their everyday life. Whilst a motivated person has a spark in their eyes, always looks for new challenges and ways they can improve themselves.

It could be said that real motivation starts from within a person based on how their needs are being consistently met. Without going into a long drawn out explanation of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs I will state some of the conclusions. The most basic of needs stated by Abraham Maslow was the need to survive. Until that need is consistently met the other needs for all practical purposes cease to exist. Once that need is met then the individual is now ready to fulfil the other needs that may exist for themselves. These can be readily determined by their own specific paradigm of life. A person’s paradigm is just the LENSES they tend to consistently see life through. A set of beliefs that colour their experience and interpretation of all that surrounds them. There is no real change until a person’s paradigm changes. But the motivation to make a paradigm change leads us to the next section.

SELF MOTIVATION AND YOU

If you are a person who is disciplined, goal-oriented, organised and instant, it means that you have the skills to motivate yourself. It means that you have a sense of achievement and that’s how motivation actually works. For you to become the person that you are today.

Motivation is temporary and short lived and hence it needs to be strengthened constantly to succeed. Negative thoughts and anxiety come into play and we can become demotivated and dubious about our future. However, just by accepting the challenges to move forward, one can get motivated as you will have the will and commitment to be successful, Accepting the failures, learning it as a lesson in life, helps us to move on to the next stage of success.

CONCLUSION

Self-motivated person knows the trick to get motivated after a disappointment and accepts the next obstacle that comes along. A motivated individual understands his thoughts and emotions, learns how to nurture them into a positive outcome, that keeps them focused on the next goal instead of being Complacent.

Here is a motivational video that will help you set your day – Video

Getting through Creative Blocks

 

Do you ever feel like you have some great ideas, but when you sit down to write them, they are not so great? Or even worse, you can’t really get a sense of what the ideas were? In one of my training courses, we have been discussing the difficulty of translating partly formed ideas into words on paper. One technique that makes use of a normally underutilised part of our brain is called “Mind Mapping.”
What is a Mind Map? Tony Buzan, who created the word “Mind Map” and has written extensively on it, describes it as a powerful graphic technique that makes use of the way our brains naturally work. He says it has four characteristics.

1. The main subject is crystallised in a central image
2. The main themes radiate from the central image as branches
3. Branches comprise a key image or keyword printed on an associated line.
4. The branches form a connected nodal structure

How Do You Mind Map? Mind mapping is best done in colour. If you have some markers or coloured pencils, and a sheet of white paper, you’re ready. If you don’t, just use what you have. Start with the central idea that you are trying to wrap your mind around. It could be the big picture (e.g. your next business idea) or a smaller idea (e.g. a process within the business.) Write it down in one or two words at the centre of the paper and draw a circle around it. If there is a symbol or picture that you can put with the words, sketch that in. The idea is that you are activating the non-verbal side of your brain. The quality of what you draw is not important since you will be the only one seeing it. The same is true for the ideas you come up with. Do not edit, just put in what comes to mind.

There are no rules for the way to proceed from here. I tend to break rules, anyway. The way my mind works, I start thinking of related ideas, categories, and ideas, which I write in little circles surrounding the circle in the middle. I then use lines to connect them. Tony Buzan likes to draw curved lines emanating from the centre and write the related or associated ideas on the lines. The result looks like a tree emanating from a central spot. My map looks more like a bunch of balloons.

As you continue to add associated ideas to your outer circles or branches, you continue to draw the connections. You will notice as you fill them in that there are cross connections that appear. I find it helpful to draw lines between those interconnecting ideas.
How Does a Mind Map Help? The brain is an associative network, and the right hemisphere (in most people) is responsible for non-verbal, visual, associative and much creative thinking. Normally when writing, we are mostly making use of our left hemisphere, which tends towards the analytical, one-thought-at-a-time approach. Our internal thoughts, however, are not shaped like that. Thus, we have a roadblock as we try to get our brilliant thoughts on paper.

By using a Mind Map as a starting point for thinking, you can bypass the blockage and feeling of being overwhelmed caused by overly analytical thinking. The Mind Map allows you to see more than one thought at a glance, and in doing so helps clarify your thinking. It shows the way ideas are interrelated (or less related than you thought.) It allows more access to creative, non-linear parts of your brain.
Here are some helpful ways to make use of Mind Mapping.

1. Use it for brainstorming ideas for your proposal or new research project.
2. Make a Mind Map of your next chapter or the one you’re currently stuck on.
3. When planning your career, make a Mind Map to show the pros and cons of your available options.
4. Use a Mind Map to take notes.
5. Mind Mapping can help keep you awake and interested in your subject.
6. Prepare for an upcoming meeting with a Mind Map and use it to explain your ideas.
7. Use it in training, both to prepare presentations and for handouts.
Play around with Mind Mapping. You’ll find it’s a refreshing break from the usual approach of writing things down.