Toolbox

7 Habits

2007-10-10T10:26:00.000+01:00

The book promises to fix your life and achieve your goals. Obviously there is a lot of competition out there. Starting with the Bible and finishing with the newest cookbook I bought.

Yet for some reason 7 Habits is exceptional. The rules are simple and actually you knew them before reading. Its just the thing of realizing them and putting into action.

Personally I love this book. It helped me realize what I want from life and did the same to some of my friends.

Its controversial. Some people love it, some hate it. Some even say that its evil Mormon propaganda as the author is a very commited member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

What are the habits?

Stephen Covey (why all the guru’s tend to be bald we will probably never find out) divides habits into 2 groups. First 3 constitute what he calls private victory. The remaining 4 are required to achieve public victory.

Habit 1: Be Proactive™

In short take responsibility for your situation. Remember that you are the only person responsible for your fate. Stop blaming the environment.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind™

Its best described by Cat and Alice from Alice in the wonderland:

Alice: Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?

Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to

Alice: I don’t much care where…

Cat: Then it does not matter which way you go

In practice this means setting yourself goals and then planning week in week out in a way that brings you closer to achieving them.

Habit 3: Put First Things First ™

Prioritize. Do things that are important. Distinguish between important and urgent. Concentrate on actions that will help achive your goals.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win™

That’s the one where most people throw the book out of the window. Its sooo American. Its sooo hard to put in practice

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood™

Listen first then talk. When listening try to understand instead of thinking what to say next .

Habit 6: Synergize™

This is a fruit of using habits 4 and 5. If you strive to achieve win - win situation and listen to understand you may be able to deliver results way better than anyone expected.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw ™

Just take care of yourself. And make sure that when you concentrate on your goals, you also develop yourself mentally, socially, spiritually and keep physically in good shape.

Here are some links you may find helpful:

Wikipedia on Stephen Covey (link)

Wikipedia on 7 habits: (link)

Franklin Covey website: (link)

Stephen Covey home site: (link)

As you can see – no rocket science here. Hope you found it interesting. Please let me know about your experience with 7 habits!

How NOT to use PowerPoint

2007-09-27T19:29:00.000+01:00

Today's post is about PowerPoint. I wanted to share two things with you:

First of them is an absolutely hillarious PowerPoint training delivered by standup comedian Don McMillan. Its very funny yet still delivers a lot of good points. Check it out yourself:

Second is slightly more serious. Slideshare.net is a community website for people sharing PowerPoint slides. When I first saw it I thought who the hell would ever want to share presentations? And who would be sad enough to go and check other people's slides? But after trying I found it quite useful. Some material is really good. Here's a sample on how to prepare good slides. Hope you'll enjoy it:

Please share your comments and let me know your thoughts.

Regards
Marcin Czajkowski

Business Book Of The Year awards 2007

2007-09-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

I have just read this year's nomination's to FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book Of The Year Award. Some of the positions seem really interesting. Two of them have already landed in my amazon shopping cart. So who are the nominees this year?

The Age of Turbulence, by Alan Greenspan - live and times of Allan Greenspan
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Book on how we underestimate the risk of highly improbable events
Immigrants, by Philippe Legrain - touching one of the most emotive subjects in recent times (already in my shopping cart)
The Last Tycoons, William D Cohan - story on the rise of Lazard Frere's investment bank
Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams - Book on how internet collaboration leads to better content/products/services (already in my shopping cart)
Zoom, by Iain Carson and Vijay V Vaitheeswaran - book on challenges faced by big oil and car making companies in developing new fuels and technologies.

It looks like the choice is not easy at all. The winner will be announced on 25 of October and will snatch a prize of £30000.

Today's FT also mentions a list of evergreen all time favorites:

Good To Great by Jim Collins (somehow I did not like this one at all!)
The Effective executive by Peter Drucker
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Heylar
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (How many times I wanted to read this one at the Uni but never got round to it???)

I am really curious what do you think about those books. Maybe you know of any that should be there but were not nominated? Please let us know in comments section.

Here are some links which you can helpful:
FT article on Business book awards click here
2006 finalists - click here
2005 finalists - click here

Manager tools - the best manager education podcast ever?

2007-09-24T20:29:00.000+01:00

Today's post is about one of the best manager education podcast. Its called Manager Tools and can be found at: http://www.manager-tools.com. It provides weekly casts focused on improving management skills and becoming more effective manager and leader. Currently the archive has over 125 roughly 30 min podcasts. Here's a short list of the most interesting subjects covered so far:

Effective teleconferencing
How to receive feedback
Answering questions in presentations
Great podcast on brainstorming
Time management
Secrets of great handshake
Manage your boss
Presenting with Power Point
How to take notes
Effective meetings

Most of them are really helpful. You can listen to the cast on your way to work and directly apply what you have heard the same day! It sometimes feels like doing an online condensed MBA course.

Hope you will find it useful. Let me know your comments!

Regards
Marcin

Zopa - better returns, cheaper credit?

2007-09-23T15:33:00.000+01:00

Today's post is about www.zopa.com . Its a new idea which can cause serious issues for banking industry. Zopa has potential to bring cheaper capital and better interest rates to all of us. Currently its getting a fair share of media coverage and is growing fast. "The Guardian" named it one of the top 10 British dot coms to watch (link).

How does it work?

Zopa acts as a platform for lenders and borrowers. It allows users to bypass banking system and thus save on interest or get better returns. At the same time it claims to offer high street bank security levels.

Zopa members offer to lend money at selected level of risk and desired interest rate. The level of risk depends on borrowers credit rating. As expected the higher the risk the greater the return. Zopa borrowers specify amount and maximum acceptable interest rate. After putting an offer to either lend or borrow the system will wait until the match is found. Depending on how attractive the rate is, Zopa member may lend/borrow really fast, wait for some time or not finalize the transaction at all. When lending/borrowing Zopa provides user with guidance on how to optimize the rate and finalize transaction quickly.

Zopa.com. Shows lender how likely is it to achieve the desired interest rate.

Zopa.com showing how interest rate depends on credit rating and loan term

There are two important questions about Zopa. The answers will determine whether its a hit or a flop:

Is it safe?

Theoretically it should be as safe as putting money into a bank account. Zopa performs credit checks on borrowers using one or more of the UK’s credit bureaux (e.g. Equifax, Call Credit, Experian). Zopa will not allow borrowers with poor credit history. If user is lending more than 500£, the money will be spread over more than 50 people. Additionally members are choosing the level of risk yourself by selecting the credit rating of people they wish to borrow to.

Is it cheaper?

According to data on Zopa site it indeed is. Borrowing rates could be as much as 2% lower than in a high street bank. Interest earned can be 2-3% higher than on your saving account.

Zopa vs other lenders - 23 Sep 07 - source: www.moneymarket.com

The big question is – would Zopa attract enough borrowers to provide capital? Will they find the offer attractive enough? We will find out soon.

Zopa – useful links:

http://www.zopa.com/ no comments here

http://www.zopa.com/member/czaya - offer to get 30£ when joining Zopa

http://www.zopa.com/zopaweb/public/about-zopa/board-structure.html - zopa board

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zopa zopa on Wikipedia

http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/analysis/2159011/zopa-sets-ebay-loans interview with one of Zopa directors in ITweek

http://www.prosper.com/ US based Zopa equivalent

Zopa in BBC

As always - thanks for reading and please let me know what do you think!

Regards
Marcin

AdBlock Plus

2007-09-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

I just found out about this one a moment ago - its a pluggin for FireFox which eliminates 90% of ads you see online.

How do I get it?
Just go to http://adblockplus.org/en/ click install.

Is it really working?
It depends on how you set up your filter. After 10 min of using I can confirm that:
1. Google ads are gone
2. 80% of annoying banners are gone

Before:

After:

So I think its worth giving it a try

Also I think that google has a problem. If this one becomes popular google ads etc are in big trouble

Regards
Marcin

Mind mapping

2007-09-15T17:34:00.000+01:00

Hi,

This is my first blog ever, but I am really passionate about the subject below. So hopefully you will enjoy it!

Today's subject is mind mapping. You can use this technique in your work and studies to increase effectiveness and improve understanding of complex issues.

So what is it all about?

Mind mapping is a technique that allows you to reflect on paper (or on the computer screen) what goes inside your head. Its completely different than what we are used to at school, university and in our professional life. Instead of taking notes in a linear way this technique forces us to create diagrams which better reflect the actual thinking process. Believe it or not but your brain does not think left to right and line by line.

Mind mapping is a big word but the concept behind it is relatively simple. It has been used for centuries. There are reports of Greek philosophers and thinkers using this technique. Porphyry of Tyros and Aristotle were among “early adaptors” .

Tony Buzan is the biggest contemporary mind mapping advocate. He spent all of his academic life dealing with mnemonic techniques and increasing potential of human brain. The guy wrote more than 80 books on the subject and is really passionate about it. Mind mapping started to be popular in early 70’s and really exploded recently thanks to software supporting it.

Here’s youTube video of Tony explaining what mind mapping is – check it if you are interested.

How do you use it?

Understanding complex problems

It allows to split complex issue into small more manageable parts. It makes it easier to see dependencies between them. I used it quite often to translate cryptic software specifications into something I could see and understand.

Agenda
It allows to prepare for the meeting in a structured way – check out below screenshot.

Note taking
Mind mapping allows for structured notes taking during meetings. I find it especially useful for brainstorming sessions when a lot of ideas are floating around. It makes it easy to track the most important stuff.

Of course you can use it for whatever else you want. Some people use it as project management software, to set and track personal/business goals or just to do their shopping list.

Ok so how do I start?

Option 1: On paper:
There is no point in explaining all the pros and cons of that. I strongly believe in your intelligence here.

Option 2: Online software (click image to enlarge)

Online software seems to be a very tempting proposition. Especially for personal use. Its free, its working, its easy to use – one cannot request more than that. Somehow (its just my personal opinion) I would not trust it with sensitive corporate data. So which software is best? If you ask me its www.mindmeister.com, though www.mind42.com is not far behind.

Option 3: Pc Software (click image to enlarge)

There is loads of very professional mind mapping packages in the market. They vary in price and features.

The one I liked the most (its used to do all screenshots in this article) is visual mind 9. Its super easy to use and has very advanced features integrating it with MS office (http://www.visual-mind.com). The only downside is the price – 100 GBP (200 USD) for the full version. My rating: 9/10

Other good products:

Freemind has good functionality and it comes for free! You can get your copy from http://freemind.sourceforge.net/. The only missing functionality is adding notes to branches. Hopefully this will be solved in the next version. My rating: 8/10 Value for money: 11/10

Mind jet is a very advanced package. Uses very similar interface to new Office 2007 products. Slightly complicated compared to the previous 2 programs. Interesting feature is a possibility to purchase productivity pack with pre created mind maps for project management, result review etc. The price is horrendously high – 200GBP for full version which seems a bit excessive. You can download trial on www.mindjet.com. My rating: 7/10

Imindmap - this software is promoted by Tony Buzan himself. It did not appeal to me though. The maps created there are fantastically colourful but I find them hard to read and vert unstructured. I am sure some of you would find this style more appealing than me. www.imindmap.com Still my rating: 5/10

I hope you found this article useful. There is plenty of online resource where you can learn more about mind mapping:

http://www.buzanworld.com/ Tony Buzan’s website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Buzan - Wikipedia - Tony Buzan’s biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_mapping - Wikipedia on Mind mapping
http://mindmapping.typepad.com/the_mind_mapping_software/ - this blog is 100% devoted to mind mapping software

Please add your comments/questions/opinions. I really value them!

Regards,
Marcin