Oracle buys Sun Microsystems

Oracle is paying, in cash, $9.50 for each Sun share. This works out to US$7.4 billion US dollars, or US$5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. The deal comes after Sun reportedly rejected IBM’s takeover bid.

As an aside, there is a rumour (purely rumour) that NetApp is a next takeover target. Will this turn out to be true, and by who?

Well, watch this space …

Self-imposed Time Pressure

Who’s Got The Monkey Now?  How to Find Out How Well You Manage Your Time
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bob_Selden]Bob Selden

Are you a manager?  Would you like more available time?  Yes, then read on . . .

How come you’ve worked hard all day but haven’t started the one task that was most important to you?  As a manager, how come your daily work schedule often falls in a heap by mid-morning?

Who’s got the monkey?  The answer is, you have – probably several!

“Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey” has been the second most popular management article ever published by the Harvard Business Review (“Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey”, by William Oncken and Donald Wass, first published by Harvard Business Review, 1974) and has been reprinted several times.  Thirty odd years later, the message Oncken and Wass sent us on management, still holds true today.

They suggested that there are three types of management-imposed time pressure – Boss, System, and Self.

Boss-imposed time pressure

Activities, which must be accomplished, or we’ll suffer the consequences!

System-imposed time pressure

Those activities/requests which come from peers and colleagues. The penalties are not so severe or as swift, but we may still suffer if these things are not done.

Self-imposed time pressure

Those activities we ourselves initiate or agree to do – particularly those things which have been upwardly delegated from people who report to us.  As managers, these activities impact heavily on our discretionary time, and the penalty for not doing these is stress.

Oncken and Wass used the monkey analogy to make their point.  As the manager, when someone in our team talks about a “problem” they want to “run past us”, the monkey (in other words, the problem) is very clearly on their back.  But when we respond with something like “Well, I haven’t got time right now, but leave it with me”, the monkey immediately leaps from their shoulders to ours.  We have just been on the receiving end of an excellent piece of upward delegation!

If this happens to you every day (or at least more often than it should), you’ll soon be carrying a cagefull of monkeys on your back. Not only have you reduced your discretionary time, you also must feed and care for the monkeys you’ve acquired.  For example, your people are probably pretty good at keeping track of their delegated task, when they say things like “Hey boss, how’s that issue going that I told you about the other day?”

The secret is to reduce the pressure of self-imposed activities to give us more discretionary time.  You can then use this time to become more productive with your boss and the system and in the process, a better manager.

How do you avoid catching monkeys and give yourself more discretionary time?  The first step is to recognise that the monkeys are jumping onto your back!

Use the following checklist to see whether as a manager you are a collector of monkeys.  Answer each with “Always”, “Often” or “Rarely”.

How often do I say . . .

“Leave it with me”

“Can I think about that?”

“I’ll get back to you on that”

“I’ve seen something like that a thousand times.  I’ll look after it for you”

“I’ll get Bob to look after that”

“Send me an e-mail on that will you?”

“Don’t you worry about it”

If you found yourself answering “Always” or “Often” for most of these, then it’s probably too late.  The monkey has just jumped!  There’s a very good chance that you are taking on the problems of your people, rather than helping them solve the problems themselves and in the process, further developing their own skills and knowledge.  In thirty years of running and designing management training programs, managers tell me that the one thing they would like to do better or more of, is delegate!

Want to try again?  Use the same “Always”, “Often” or “Never” on the following questions.

How often do I say . . .

“Let me know if you have trouble”

“You know you don’t have to do it that way”

“That’s interesting.  I’ve never seen anything quite like that before”

“I remember when that happened to . . . ”

“I think my last boss had something like that happen to him/her”

If you found yourself answering “Always” or “Often”, then the result is not as bad as the first list.  However, beware!  The monkey is about to jump!   While the responses sound very supportive and helpful (which they are), starting out like this invariably ends up with you, the manager, taking on the problem to solve.

How did you score on both lists of questions?  Do you use similar phrases to some of the ones in the checklists?  If you found yourself ticking a number of “always” or “often” columns, or you use similar phrases regularly, then chances are you need to be careful about taking on too many monkeys.  Think about what:

- you should and can do,

- then, what others could do for you. 

What you “should do” is all about setting your priorities and sticking with them.  What are the two or three things that you must achieve today, “come what may”.  Do not be swayed from these!

What you “can do” has nothing to do with your ability, rather it is about the amount of time you have available and how you use that time – in other words, effective time management.  As the manager, you are the “expert” – your people know that there are lots of things that you can do.  Do not be trapped into doing things just because you know how.  While it may take a little bit of your time to teach or coach someone else, in the long run doing so will save you heaps of time.

What “others can do for you” is about your willingness and ability to delegate.  Remember, developing your people to take responsibility will provide you with more discretionary time to devote to other activities.

Bob Selden is the Managing Director of the National Learning Institute and the author of the Negotiating Advantage, a blended learning process on negotiating.  You can get more information on Bob and the Negotiating Advantage at http://www.nationallearning.com.au http://www.nationallearning.com.au/index_files/NegotiatingAdvantageProfile.htm

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Selden http://EzineArticles.com/?Whos-Got-The-Monkey-Now?–How-to-Find-Out-How-Well-You-Manage-Your-Time&id=147636

Cost savings – is that your prime objective?

This is a follow-up on this other article I posted: Objective – Cost Savings?

In every high value-adding business, mine included, there is a direct correlation between quality and price. This is a basic law of business.

I recall this situation about a year ago. I had sold a consulting package to help a client streamine his business process thereby achieving cost savings. This wise client of mine, at the first kick-off meeting, made it very clear that any cost saving cannot come at the expense of service degradation for his client. “If I really wanted to save costs ruthlessly,” he said, “I might as well just shut down this business!”

Wise, indeed. Procurement executives who go for the lowest price, or press the price of a current supplier down, without giving this action some thought and without fully understanding the sevice level degradation that his company is going to suffer because of this, is doing his company, his colleagues, and himself a grave injustice. This is true for procurement executives in almost any industry – the PR industry included. [Read: PR...paperclips or partnership?]

SPRING Singapore GST Assistance Scheme

SPRING Singapore is the enterprise development agency under Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry. SPRING Singapore’s objective is to grow innovative companies and to foster a competitive Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector. SPRING Singapore works with partners to help enterprises in securing financing, capabilities and management development, technology and innovation cultivation, and accessing to overseas markets. In addition, as Singapore’s national standards and accreditation body, SPRING Singapore also develops and promotes internationally-recognised standards and quality assurance to enhance competitiveness and facilitate trade.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Assistance Scheme is an initiative that falls within SPRING Singapore’s Capability Development track. This is an assistance scheme for Singapore’s local businesses:

• that have opted for voluntary GST registration with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS);  and
• who wish to set up or improve their accounting system and processes to be GST-compliant.

In a nutshell, the SPRING Singapore GST Assistance Scheme supports up to 100% of accounting software costs, and 50% of the qualifying costs for the following cost items – subject to a maximum grant of $5,000 per company:

• professional fees and training costs charged by third party IT consultants;
• hardware costs; and
• one time activation charges and up to 1 year of subscription fees for a new Internet connection

More details about this scheme may be found at this link: SPRING Singapore GST Assiatance Scheme

Web 2.0 Business Value Proposition

Web 2.0, or more correctly the future of the web, is all about integration of everyday activities with the web. The appeal of Web 2.0 is not longer about the technology. Rather, it is about the availability, and ease of use of these technologies, to enhance our lives – both for work, and for play.

Companies who are involved with web technologies aim at businesses should quickly re-focus their unique selling proposition into one along the lines of the following:

Our business is to make your work easier, more productive and fun. [And please be as specific as possible about which part of the work you are talking about; and how that part of the work pieces into the bigger picture of the business the client is in]

Companies targeting the consumer space should also have a similar value statement; one that goes like this:

Our business is to make your life easier, more enjoyable and fun. [And please be as specific as possible about which part of his life you are talking about; and how that part of life pieces into the bigger picture of him being a human being existing in this world]

Problem Solvers

I was reading a magazine on my cab ride to work this morning, and I came across this piece of wisdom:

To succeed in business, observe the functional and emotional needs of humans…Also, it is critical to understand that you do not ask people for a solution to their problems. Very often, people do not know the solution that they are looking for. They also do not know the exact problem. They do know, however, that they are experiencing the irritating symptoms. That role of coming out with a solution lies with the creators. Businesses should aim to be creators, for successful businesses ARE creators. The rest just drops out along the way.

What a great piece of wisdom! Remember, if one starts discussing the solution with a client without first confirming the symptons and understanding the root problem(s), one is definitely going down the wrong path. What would you do if when you enter a doctor’s clinic, the very first thing the doctor asks you is, “Are you looking for aspirin?”

I will run out immediately!

Internet Business Consultancy

The Internet has created vast amounts of opportunity for businesses – particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Tools and mechanisms that used to be available to large corporations are now available to SMEs – at a fraction of the original cost. This is the power of technological development.

The question now is, with the large amount of resources becoming available, how can SMEs take full advantage of them?

In fact, a lot of SMEs are still unaware that these resources are available to them, let alone use them to achieve business advantages. Those who are aware are also not skilled enough to string theses resources to the achievement of meaningful business objectives. This has created a new business segment – Internet Business Consultantancy for SMEs. SurelyIT.com has a unit that does just that.

To take the full potential of available Web resources to your advantage, contact: sme@surelyit.com

Strategy-Led Business Guidance System

Having observed many companies over the last ten odd years, I have come to realise that successful companies have one thing in common – they all have what I call a Strategy-Led Business Guidance System.

Based on this realisation, I am to structure my own organisation in implementing and formalising our own Strategy-Led Business Guidance System – to a great level of success, I must say. In the next few blog entries, I will detail the components of a Strategy-Led Business Guidance System. Hopefully, you can also implement one in your own business. More on this later…

Objective – Cost Savings?

Is your business objective purely to achieve cost savings these days?

If it is, you are missing a very big point. In reality, costs can never go below what I call the minimum possible cost barrier (MPCB) – if you are in a real business, that is.

Organisations that are specialised and that have a very high level of skills and knowledge (i.e. experts) in their domain will have costs that approach the MPCB. In all my conversations with my business process consulting clients, I first strive to identify that particular industry’s MPCB. On that basis, we can then guage how much off is this particular client’s costs with regards to MPCB, and the reasons behind that gap. We then strive to propose steps to bring the client’s costs closer to the MPCB. There are many ways that costs can be brought to approach MPCB consistently, and such ways become obvious when we follow the process. More on this later…