Passive Reading

Imagine owning a library of 150 books, 145 of which you have not read and 4 of which you have only read halfway. Or, imagine a library of 150 books where you have managed to read all books but cannot in 2 minutes explain the theme of a book. This is called passive reading.
Passive readinng is the habit of reading not with the purpose of understanding but for reading sakes. I personally have come across numerous books, at first I read to boast to people but the moment I am asked the message of the book, I get confused and defensive. After facing much embarrassment, I have had to bring down the way I buy and download books and focus on trying to understand what other books I have are communicating.
After encountering so much problems reading passively and not understanding the message and theme of a book, I took the decision to always be an active reader, this has helped me in better understanding what i am reading, and abke to put it into practice where need be.
It is very important to put what is learnt into use, it helps a great deal. Majority of the books we read contain real life experiences of people that have been in the same shoes as we presently are and they show how they were able to wriggle around and come out successfully. This is for you to follow and learn, even though i am more of an advocate of personal experience been the best teacher.
Be an active and proactive reader, not a passive and reactive reader.

Social Networking Site for Business

In the past, how do organizations drive traffic to their business? Radio jingles, TV commercials, bill boards, newspaper ads, and other crude unrefined means just to get the targets tilt their preference towards the organization’s business over its competitors’.
With internet connection now rampant in almost every nook and cranny the world over thanks to mobile computing platforms such as mobile phones, organizations now have websites to showcase their business offerings and company information where targets can access the organization’s information 24/7, hence the now common practice to see on every business card, the website of an organization printed on it for prospective clients to visit and gather more information. This has however gone further with organizations using 3rd party websites such as alibaba.com to promote, advertise and create global awareness of their business.
Social networking sites have also created a platform for organizations to even generate more awareness of their businesses at next to no cost. It is estimated that there are over 500 million users on facebook of which over 4 million are Nigerians and over 175 million twitter users of which over 1.5 million are Nigerians who access their accounts every hour via computers and mobile phones which is even more widely used due to its mobility and ease of access.
A social networking site as the name implies is a platform created for people to interact and network across borders as obviously boundaries dont exist on the World Wide Web, hence people can find long lost friends and families using social networking sites, while making new friends. These have however evolved as we now see advertisements on these sites due to the high volume of traffic they command. People now see it as a means to be known, especially celelbrities who now see followership of their celebrity brand on social networking sites as a status symbol.
Social netowkring sites go a long way in promoting businesses with advertisements, and providing direct interaction between organizations and their targets and present customers. it provides visibliity to the millions of users available on these sites and also comes in as a medium of interaction between the organizations and their target markets.
Organizations, multinationals and NGOs including banks and airlines have seen this as a means to drive traffic to their websites as they now have in their commercials and ads the words “follow us on twitter” or “like us on Facebook” to draw targets to these social sites. Even news magazines, TV and radio stations are not left out as they see it as an opportunity to catch those of their audience who are not available to view their programs as it is aired. NGOs, sports clubs and even religious organizations have a presence on these sites as a medium to reach out to their congregation.
Therefore even with its perceived draw backs, a social network presence aside the regular website presence is a quality medium to increase awareness of an organization’s brand or image.

A SYNOPSIS OF LEAPFROGGING THE COMPETITION by OREN HARARI, Ph.D.

NAME: SALISU UMAR REG. NO.: SMS/06/BUS/04523

BUS4305 ASSIGNMENT – STRATEGIC POLICIES AND MANAGEMENT

A SYNOPSIS OF LEAPFROGGING THE COMPETITION by OREN HARARI, Ph.D.
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Every organization faces competition and is required to strategise and develop steps to beat competition. Leapfrogging the Competition by business management expert and popular speaker; Dr. Oren Harari showed vital steps to becoming a market leader.
Leapfrogging competition is a blueprint of five Giant Steps that will make or break an organization into or from market leadership, but it is the fifteen commitments described in the page that will make or break the execution of that blueprint.
An organization can get market leadership by thinking out of the box, and staying ahead of the competition by being exceptional and thinking ahead of competitors innovating new ideas before competitors do.
An organization looking to gain market leadership is also required to ensure that there is a wealth of information available in the organization. As information is vital to an organization’s survival, a leapfrogging organization knows that information dissemination and free flow of information is vital to destroy barriers to the flow of ideas and literate the employees.
Gone are the days of mass markets and uniform, standardized products and services. Leapfrogging organizations believe they are in business not to build profits but customers which subsequently translates into increased market share, earnings, shareholder value and profits. They also tailor their products and services to each individual customer, offering personalized services and products to suit each customer thereby increasing customer trust and loyalty.
A leapfrogging organization needs allies and builds trusted networks all around the world. They believe no man is an island and seek intimate relationships. They don’t see an “us” vs. “them”, they instead see networks and alliances where information is freely shared and which is based on trust. To cap it all, leapfrogging organizations look to partner with competitors and customers to move on to the next level.
A leapfrogging organization also needs to embrace change. Even though change is messy, unruly, chaotic and unpredictable, the organization must plan change as situations change to make it conversant with on-going trends in its reality.
Finally, even though the 5 giant steps tell an organization how to leapfrog the competition, the real value is in the provision of tools to capitalize and empowering the organization to do so with gratitude and grace. As we can’t deny transformation, nor can we predict the onslaught of changes that are coming around the corner in every sector of the economy. What we can do is search for them as they emerge, and shape them toward reinventing our businesses and creating new value or customers and investors. The five giant steps help an organization to do that.

Position Paper on How to Encourage Strategic Thinking in Nigeria

sms/06/bus/04523 salisu umar
Bus4304 – Strategic Thinking and Innovative Management
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Position Paper on How to Encourage Strategic Thinking in Nigeria

The goal of Nigeria, been a third world country is to be among the top 20 economies in the world and it requires good strategic thinkers to reach that goal. Strategic thinking unlike conventional thinking, points clearly towards the critical strategic question “why” or “how” which is required to make a good strategic choice, this shall be the crux of this paper.
Strategic thinking is a proactive change process by which people think, access, view and create the future they envision while adding value to society through accomplishing high payoff results.
Encouraging strategic thinking in Nigeria requires working on the hearts and minds of the Nigerian people to make them think strategically to take control and activate the long-term vision they have for Nigeria. This as stated above, is by encouraging actions based on the “why” and “how. This is further corroborated by John D. Rockefeller where he says “Good management consists in showing average people ‘how’ to do the work of superior people.”
I shall encourage strategic thinking in Nigeria by educating the people to think on “why” something needs be done and then come up with the “how” of getting it done. When people have a good reason for why they have to carry out something, they can come up with how to carry it out and then think strategically towards the achievement of the set goal.
By working on the minds and hearts the people, I shall plant in them a powerful vision of what the future should like and why it should look like that. This will enable them think strategically, the “how” of the actualizing of this vision.
Nov, 2010

REFERENCES
12 Lessons from famous Business Masters – 1000 International club, pg 8.
R. Greene, (1998): The 48 Laws of Power; Penguin Books, USA
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/strategic_thinking
cfar.com/cf/index.cfm

Drink Driving

Drink driving is an offence punishable under law. Aside been a punishable offence, in reality, drink driving is a dangerous thing to do. By drink driving, I mean driving while consuming an alcoholic beverage.
When one drives under the influence of alcohol, he exposes himself to danger and road hazards, especially accidents.
Government and law enforcement agents especially the Road Safety Corps guys have been carrying out campaigns of enlightenment to inform the driving public of dangers associated with drink driving. Everyone is expected to put hands on deck to rid our society of this crazy menace called drunk driving.
What seems to marvel me is that even with all the efforts these guys are putting, we still have situations where alcoholic beverages are sold on highways, especially in traffic on motorways where commuters are supposed to be travelling at great speeds. We have a situation where hawkers sell alcoholic beverages to motorists on highways.
It’s such a sad situation to see motorists in traffics buying these alcoholic beverages and consuming same there and then. Some go as far as consuming as much as 3 to 4 cans, all while driving. It’s so funny because you can imagine that some guys get thirsty and purchase water while some feel alcohol is the best quench buster.
In the first place hawking on the streets is prohibited. To add prohibition onto prohibition, hawking alcohol is prohibited and then to sell to motorists? That’s the height. I mean it couldn’t get worse than that could it? I bet it could and here’s why:
Most alcoholic drinks – beer to be precise as this is what is most commonly sold – contain little alcoholic content, take for instance ‘Star” which contains 5% alcohol, ‘Smirnoff ice’ contains 5.5% alcohol and ‘Guinness Stout’ contains 7.5% alcohol. The worse case here is where you see these guys hawking alcoholic drinks with as high as 40% to 50% alcoholic drinks like ‘Alomo’ – 40%, and ‘Chelsea Dry Gin’ – 43%. A shot of the latter is like taking 3 cans of ‘Guinness Stout’, you can imagine the effect that will have on a motorist and the rollover effect that touches the innocent pedestrian that gets hit by this drunken driver.
The message don’t drink and drive is quite clear for the right thinker, but hazy for the wrong thinker because if you say don’t drink and drive but permit the sale of alcohol beverages on roads, you are as well paying lip service.
I believe those guys be banned from this crazy act so as to make our roads safe. No alcoholic drinks should be sold in traffic or anywhere near a busy highway.
Why would a sane person even think of doing such? I may not be saying out rightly ban hawking because one way or the other we have benefited from hawkers bringing to our cars one thing we have been procrastinating long time ago to buy. In fact I bought my monopoly set I have been procrastinating to buy in traffic.

The 2010 F1 Season Review

The 2010 F1 season has come and gone but the excitement still lives on. This year’s championship with its rules change especially that of zero refuelling made sceptics believe that overtaking may be impossible. Instead, this rule change brought about a massive use of strategy by the racing teams, which at the end of the day was what Sebastian Vettel had the upper hand of to win the YMC race and the championship.
The rule for Q3 tyres to be used to start every race also brought about good strategic decisions by teams, but unfortunately didn’t work out well for Mark Webber at Abu Dhabi.
At a time other teams were doing their testing, Redbull Racing told the world they would be 1 week late as they were developing a revolutionary car – true to their words, they came out with the RB6 that won them both the Drivers and Constructors Championship.
In this year’s championship, I have been able to learn a lesson, I learnt that no matter what you do, even with competitors, do your thing and be yourself.
At the race in Abu Dhabi, Alonso came in as the clear favourite but because he had a divided mind, he couldn’t focus, that’s why he could lose his P3 at the start of the race. To make matters worse, Alonso instead of focussing on his own strategy to win the title decided to react to Mark’s strategy. This was his greatest undoing.
Webber on his own had to pit cos he stayed long during Q3 and this caused his tyres to wear and he had to change it as soon as he could during the race. Alonso didn’t need to change his tyres that soon but ended up letting Mark’s strategy be a basis for his own tyre change.
Sebastian Vettel came into the race with P-P in mind and drove his heart out. Evidence that Sebastian Vettel did his thing is in the fact that his race engineer had to inform him they needed to wait until the race was over to see where the others will lie; otherwise Vettel had started celebrating his YMC victory.
At YMC, he did ‘focus driving’ and came out first. Even when he knew his rivals had to slip up for him to win, he never bothered about them and focussed.
Lewis also did same but Vettel was in a better position. Alonso went from been in control to been the controlled thanks to Vitaly. His pit was ill-timed. He pitted cos Mark did. Wrong Move.
Vettel pitted when he had to and made sure he had built a heavy lead, and his pit stop was a record 3.8secs, he only needed Jenson to pit so he could get his P1.
Kudos to Redbull Racing for a job well done and kudos to Sebastian Vettel for being a good sportsman as he fought to the very last race.
Finally, the 2010 Formula 1 Season, thanks to Redbull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel has taught me to always fight to the finish. Its not over until its over, and as we say in AIESEC; Its Up To You…