Crisis handling tip

Crisis - an imposed reality. How not to be an effect of it?

Since quite some time a word sprung up. This word has been wandering around our society and causes effects. I suppose it would not be surprising to you that this word is “crisis”.

I do not think it is worth speaking about the reasons and the effects. There are other publications which deal with these issues and it seems that an agreement how something is bad and awful can easily be reached. But after such a discussion and agreement one remains with the strange feeling that “That’s the way it is” or “Let’s hope together that better times will come”. 

And thus we turn into Observers and Effect of what someone else is doing. We fall into the trap of the crisis.

But most of us want to be Participators in life and business, not just Observers; we want to be a Cause for the events around us and for what happens to us. And this is a correct goal. But the problem is not with the goal. It is with the means, the knowledge of reaching it.

Because of this two of the most often reactions in times of crisis are cutting budgets and sucking people. At first glance it seems to be a very natural reaction. The problem is that it is a reaction. And every reaction is an indicator that man acts as an effect of something and not as a cause for it. And this act is not always the surviving act. Short after such actions people realize that there are no positive changes.

Where is the key to the enlightened and successful approach? What to do in cases when we hear that thunder “crisis” or that it is about to come to us? When leaders of top-companies declare that 20-40% drop is expected in their branch? Or when a super expert says: “don’t count on such and such sector” or “many businesses will not survive the winter”?

In order to find this key we should first know something. Mr. Hubbard speaks about 12 conditions of existence in which a person or a company may be in. They start from the condition of Confusion where the person does not know where he is, who he is and what he is doing. And the heist condition is the one of Power where the person controls and manages things in his sphere if influence at will. In between these two conditions there are 10 more conditions which go in gradients. Each one of them has a formula – a sequence of steps and actions which is understood and followed bring the person to the next higher condition.

Each of us and each company is in some of those conditions. How to find out in what conditions we are? By the time trend of the main statistics which gives value if a given function. For example if I am a HR manager one of my main statistics would be the correctly recruited people for the correct position, the number of people who go up in results, a number of motivated people.  

If I am a marketing specialist my main statistics would be the number of surveys that gave me the necessary information about the market; the number of successful marketing campaigns which led to interest. And thus for every function of the company. Besides the company also has an overall statistics – it would be its credibility for example.

When we have this number we can define the condition we are in. If my main statistics goes slightly up then my condition is normal. If my main statistics does not change or goes slightly down, then my condition is Emergency. If my statistics goes seriously down then I am in Danger.

The periods of the so called “crisis” ordinarily correspond to the condition of Emergency. In this condition there are 5 steps in an exact sequence.

The first one is: Promote (show yourself) and produce. And this is just the opposite of the many people’s and shrinking businesses’ reactions – they start seeking faults and cut bonuses, suck people and spread out panic and tension.

Here we can include more intelligent marketing which should give information for the everyday movements and demands of the market; good and adequate PR, raising the quality of the products/service; more mature and unite leadership which is flexible and responsible.

The second step is: „Change your operating bases”. Change your habits, processes, procedures which led to the drop in statistics. Here many people would say: „but the market is shrinking” or they are looking to other external reasons. Well, we help them see that the reason is mainly internal, in their organizations. And when they see it, life becomes easier.

I will mention the fifth step too: „Stiffen the discipline”. What is a discipline however? This word is charged with negative connotation and that’s why it needs clarification. Discipline in our terms is the ability of the mind to make the difference between the following things:

1. What must be done (the most important priorities);

2. What should not be done;

3. What is only desirable;

4. What is trivial.

It looks simple at first glance and it is. But in our practice as coaches and consultants we have seen quite a lot of examples for mixing of the above mentioned things. For example, a company instead of investing in improving the capacity and competence of its leaders, its marketing and PR specialists it distributes dividends or organizes a big party.

Another mistake in crisis is the mass sucking of people, cuts. On one hand crisis is a good period of realization what money is being spent for, what the energy and resources of the company is being used for. Lots of managers are surprised after such a balance. This happens because the condition of the company is not measured only by the main statistics for the activities. If I am in emergency and I act as if I was in Danger then the measures will not be adequate and it will not be long before I find myself in Danger. Sometimes in Danger those general changes, mass reorganizations and sucking people are needed but NOT in emergency. That’s why we need statistics and knowledge of the Conditions to know what to do.

Only then we will be able not to be an effect by striking titles in the press, by negative conclusions of authorities, by inadequate reactions of our clients, suppliers, partners and of whole markets. 

As we know the formulas of the Conditions and when we are able to assess where we are only by statistics of our activities every single crisis for us will just be an opportunity to find new horizons and sure survival.

Our mission is to help leaders and managers to improve themselves and their surrounding by this technology and to be a Cause.    

Want to know more about it? Click here.

Success

Marc J. de Turck

© 2007 IDEAS.  All Rights Reserved. Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. HUBBARD, L. Ron Hubbard, are a trademarks owned by  R.T. C. and are used with its permission.

Train your staff before Eu funds

European Funds –Yes, but what to do meanwhile to survive?
Train your staff before its too late

In the recent years the topic of European funds has become very popular in our country. In the last 10-15 years not a few people received funds from those funds under one form or another and that helped them develop their business and stabilize their position on the market.

After Bulgaria joining the EU this topic became even more popular. Varieties of grants for training, qualification and re-qualification of personnel, for purchasing machines and materials for production started to be given. As a result companies from different sectors begun to see the EU funds as a possibility for stability and prosperity. 

This is understandable. No one would find a few hundred or a few million Euro for machinery, buildings, production etc. as unnecessary.

Here however there can be a problem, a trap. Lots of people would say to themselves: A! If I could get somehow a few hundreds or million Euros from the EU funds this would solve my problems”. As a results people start looking for channels and connections, to fill in big packs of forms, to hire consultants and to direct their efforts in that direction. This takes months, sometimes an year and the outcome is unclear. At the same time the market is changing, the competition becomes stronger and the company makes ups and downs. The problems remain.

Actually gaining EU funds is possible to solve a few problems but will surely not resolve the main problems, i.e. those problems which create the rest of the problems. Lack or the insufficient amount of money is not the main problem – it is rather the inability to find the optimal way of its gaining by the direct or indirect activity of the company. It is good that someone gives you a kilo of fish which solves the problem in a short term. But it is much better if this someone shows you how he caught it. This will solve the problem in a long and stable run.

What are in this case the main problems which the Bulgarian business is facing in general? Of course this topic is very broad but I would like to mention some of them which I and my colleagues faced in most of the cases.

1. The company has difficulties with its management – the managers have difficulties in setting accomplishing their goals, in delegating responsibilities, in coordinating their teams, with non-ethical actions, with demotivating their staff, in creating a sane and productive atmosphere, in the correct positioning of their company on the market, in creating an organization, an administrative structure which can function in an optimal mode.
2. The company has a problem managing its human resources. It is about recruiting demotivated or incorrect people for the posts, the existence of confusion concerning the functions of the different posts and people, badly working communicational channels, demotivated personnel and inability to keep the key specialists.
3. Inability to set up and realize winning financial strategies.
4. Maintaining conflict environment – internal and external conflicts;
5. Lack of enough ability in selling and bad service to the existing clients;
6. Lack of skills to make a good PR with the purpose of a positive image of the company and its personnel and getting a new people interested in its products.

I am sure that this list can be enriched with more problematic points which are the fundament of the non-optimal results. If companies can find an adequate help concerning the aforementioned problematic points then the need of external funds would be considerably less. It may sound a little far-fetched but there is no fund or a sum of money which can give a solution to those problematic points. Two or three new machines from the EU funds, a new building or other external help would just be a patch of a new fabric on an old and worn out dress. A person patches one hole while the whole dress is tearing apart allover.

   

That’s why lots of managers are facing the question of finding global, holistic solutions for themselves and for their companies, a “know-how” – administrative and industrial which is able to place them and their companies on an survival and prosperity guaranteed ground. 

Moreover in his book “Ethics” Mr. Hubbard whose management system my company is using in its trainings, consultancy and coaching speaks about the so called Conditions, level of operativeness in life as a whole in all of its manifestations and specifically in business. There are precise and correct formulas which are connected to these levels of operativeness. If they are applied as indicated in the book of Ethics this will surely lead to stability, expansion, influence and well-being.    

The formulas for the different condition form a scale which shows the degree of success and the potential for survival of a given person, post, department, company, holding. The main instrument for measuring the condition, the potential for survival is statistics – a number or a volume compared to earlier numbers and volumes of the same things. The lowest conditions are Confusion, Treason, Enemy, Doubt and Liability. The upper levels are Non-Existence, Danger, Emergency, Normal Operation, Affluence, Power Change and Power.

For example in the condition of Non-Existence in which a person is when starting on a new job – with or without experience has the following formula:

1. Find a comm line;
2. Make yourself known;
3. Discover what is needed or wanted;
4. Do, produce and/or present it.

Lots of people with some experience on a given position when entering a new job do not know this formula and act as if they were in Affluence or in Power. They immediately start to introduce changes, to look for the easy way, to impose their style of work and the way to do the work they now from before. This gives them and the company headaches.

So it is important for a person to be able to identify what condition he is in and correspondingly to apply the formula for this condition and to go up to the upper one.

Again I would like to say the following: there is no fund or a chunk of money which can substitute the lack of administrative know-how, the knowledge and skill in regard of management and human resources and knowing and applying the formula for the Conditions. Those funds would help those who already know these things and who are able.

And it is good that the companies in Bulgaria which realize the necessity of training and that the training and bettering their personnel is the key to finding a solution the problematic points, which were mentioned above. It is good that they allocate annual budgets for training or decide on the spot when a need arises or when they receive an offer for a training they need. This on one hand is a question of mentality. On the other hand it is a question of what is available on the training market and how an owner of a company or an Executive can choose who should train himself and his personnel and how to measure the benefits from training. But this is another topic. 

So the question is: European funds – Yes, but what to do meanwhile to survive?

The EU funds and subsidies for different programs are an important element for survival and prosperity of people from different branches of economy.

But in my opinion even more important is the training and improving of personnel so that a company or a person may find the solution for the six problematic points. These points if remaining unsolved can create a danger for a person or a company in a long run.

I would like to end with a quotation from the book of Mr. Hubbard “Problems of work”. He writes: “A workman is not just a workman. A laborer is not just a laborer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are the machine itself”.

Bulgaria - Seminar on love based on L.R. Hubbard

Sofia, September 20th 2014,Hotel Kempinki. Monique and Marc De Turck-De Clerck held together a seminar on Love.  

Defining love...defining how to understand each other and how to get rid of negative reactions, critics so as to love each other again.


Marc and Monique where married for 17 years, then separated for 2 years and now since 8 months living again together. This seminar is held every month from now on. 
For more info: www.obuchenia.eu.

BAUCHEMIE BULGARIA GETS SALES TRAINING

Bauchemie, a German company with Bulgarian subsidiary, specialized in resins for factory floors and concrete structures got sales training from Ideas FreeBoss.

The motivated sales team is eager to get more contracts sold and with its professional solutions to help the Bulgarian building industry.

Again a production company in Bulgaria who uses IDEAS FreeBoss services.

Global Life gets lecture on emotions

Plovdiv, Bulgaria.  More than 50 Global Life top consultants-brokers in life insurances get a lecture on how to motivate your team using emotions.







Marc de Turck and Emilia Stoyanova
as translator deliver this lecture
in a very relaxed atmosphere.





On of the attendees is the daughter of a consultant.
Kalina is the youngest ever participant to a business seminar
held by Marc de Turck.

She played very well the emotions and showed to have a great future as sales person.

Essay on political employment

While travelling over the world and consulting government institutes, I observed quite a lot of people having the idea that most top positions in a government institute are taken by friends of one or another political leader, some of them even without the competence of taking this position. This then can create in the minds of the population revolutionary ideas justified by the idea that all people working for the Government are corrupt.  Although I agree that this might be the case in quite some instances, I cannot, but look deeper in the underlying reasons of this and – what is more important – how to possibly change this and make sure the top government positions are held by competent people. So i did some research on this issue in different countries and came to some I hope interesting conclusions and a possible solution.

I decided to use a metaphor of the Maritime world with an imagined country “The United North Pole States” which is a democracy and has a National Assemble with a Governmental Fleet.Imagine thus a Government Fleet from “The United North Pole Federation” which is ready to move south.  In principal this fleet is owned by the National Assembly of the United North Pole Federation.

Every five years the National Assembly votes for a General Staff (Council of Ministers), which gets this fleet on loan for five years.  An agreement has been reached on the number of ships (Ministries) in the fleet and in which direction they set sail. The fleet exists of different ships (Ministries). The ministers themselves determine their individual goals, supplies and crew within the budgetary rules. Some regulations have been prepared (Personnel Law and related regulations) to man the ships in a uniform way. Within the fleet there is one sampling vessel that has the statutory power to unify the crew and to appoint the right man at the right place.  However, this ship has capacity problems – insufficient troops, knowledge, authority – to carry this out successfully.  Also ….. a large part of the active population does not have sufficiently interesting alternatives to earn money ashore – or at least thinks that there is no future within the private sector – and therefore wants to sail with the fleet in order to be assured of an income.

From a positive consideration, we state that the majority of the public officials and politicians is of good will. So, what should a Minister or Secretary with good intentions do in such a case?

He/She takes a large number of people on board, without necessarily care for the mission of these people. In some countries this is called “accommodate”. Consequently, you get ships with people who have the right positions to exercise their duties, on the one hand, and people who wrongly where accommodated, who do not have a clear position, on the other hand. On this ship are also people that have been accommodated by a previous Minister. This leads for some vessels to block, what might frustrate people who are in the right position and who do have a mission to carry out.  In the long-term this leads to de-motivation, frustration from those that have been wrongly accommodated.

As a result, at some vessels chaos arises, where:

·       either everyone meddles with everything;

·       either everyone is doing his/her own thing;

·       either nobody is doing anything.

Several international and national “steersmen ashore” advise that a number of people should go overboard, that clear responsibilities should be distributed, that people should be trained or sell themselves individual toolkits to the Ministers that will resolve all problems. The risk here is that the different Ministries will follow their own directions even more and that the crew will be treated arbitrary and in a non-uniform manner. 

A “every man for himself mentality” will emerge. The sad part is that the above situation is created with good intentions to offer people work and livelihood. But the consequence is pernicious, both for the “accommodated” and the other officials. Taking into account a worldwide average of roughly four persons per household, one can also argue that the wrong accommodation of one person can have a potential negative effect in the long-term on many voters of the Assembly.

The effect of a wrong accommodation is therefore also for the politician, who supported the accommodation, possibly negative. Nobody has an interest in the survival of such a state, neither the politicians, nor the government officials, nor the population.

The situation as described above does nog occur without a reason. Some underlying causes – interests must exist that lead to this situation. These underlying causes, when recognized and dealt with can launch the improvement.  What are these underlying causes? What causes, once recognized and dealt with, can trigger a real change in the direction of the ideal picture?

The obvious slogan: “It is politics again” is too limited as the underlying cause. To demolish any political influence is no solution within a democratic system.

I believe that there are three, also related, underlying factors.

Insufficient attention of the population and its politicians for social and political advantages to assign a clear objective to each Ministry, what ever this objective may be.

The objective can even be: “to put everybody to work” to avoid social unrest, to create an electoral base; as long as the goal is sufficiently clear. The key amid a democratic system lies in clearly stating by majority accepted, practical, measurable, to achieve objectives. If the politicians would pay more attention to clearer communication and monitoring of objectives for the Government – objectives which are accepted by the population – it could have benefits for both politicians and the population.

Insufficient attention of the population and its politicians to the building of a full employment alternative in the private sector.

Social employment has its raison d’être. In the long-term this leads to insufficient appreciation for public officials and private entrepreneurs who do have a clear objective and who are doing a good job. In the long-term this leads to impoverishment of a society and therefore also of its political actors. If the politicians together with the “captains of industry” and the social and academic world really make work of a full employment alternative in the private sector and would take care of the necessary “adjustment”, than the pressure would diminish on people that have been, for social reasons, wrongly accommodated.

Insufficient attention of the political actors on the political benefits to have a clear relation between objective and staff. Understatement of personnel affairs within the government leads to a minor, administrative role for personnel affairs. However, these people keep the machine going; the staff should not only be identified, but should be scheduled in a correct and uniform manner. If you give people no destination, nor responsibility, than the majority of your public officials will assign themselves a (possibly wandering) destination and (ir)responsibilities. On top of this, if your staff is arbitrary rewarded, promoted or dismissed of simply not cared for enough and the public official lets this happen, than you create problems in a country where a large part of the labour population is a public servant.

This has a pernicious effect, per wrongly accomodated official, up to four or five potential voters.

So accommodating people wrongly has a pernicious effect on government, public officials, the population and for the politicians. If the politicians would give more attention to establishing clear objectives per ministry, to the development of a employment alternative and accommodating on the basis of clear formation states – in such a way that the accomodated people have a clear objective and a clear position – then politicians could create a positive effect, not only within the government, but also within their electorate and thus gain politically from better accommodation.  Accomodation would then be based on clear regulation and is broadly accepted.

The mere realization of the social, political and economic benefits of:

·       clearly defined and communicated goals per Ministry;

·       investing in a alternative employment in the private sector;

·       a clearer relationship between objective and staffing (better accommodation);

can motivate people to change something, to improve.

And the social, political and economic benefits of the three changes mentioned above are many. We think of:

·       ministerial services that are clearer, faster and more efficiently be performed;

·       ministerial services that are exercised cheaper;

·       officials with a clear job to do, know where they stand and where to go;

·       officials who are not ashamed of their profession, but are respected;

·       private entrepreneurs who are successful and are happy to recruit people;

·       politicians who are respected more by the population;

·       a population with a purchasing power;

·       a population that has confidence in their politicians;

·       a well served population.

The responsibility of the above mentioned causes and the harvesting of the social and political benefits lies not only by the politicians, but also with the public officials who let this happen, as well as with the whole population.  Something can be done about it!

Let's do it.
Drs Marc J. de Turck