Raúl Gorrín The Entrepreneur-humanist

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lunes, 28 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Gorrín: “As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.” Henry Van Dyke

By Raúl Gorrín. A routine is basically an act that you repeat on a regular basis. This basis can be daily, several times a day or weekly. A routine is more something that you do so often that you get so used that you don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s something that’s molded into you and your life.

A routine makes you comfortable and it is dependable. You know what will happen each and every day. Now in a company there is a rule:

“Stagnation equals death.”

As long as things stay the same your production can not grow and as time goes on and as your competitors grow and develop, you will lose your competitive edge.

Does that mean that you should go 'gong ho' all the time and have no routines at all?

Of course not!

James Clear describes it well in his quote –

“Tiny routines that are repeatable are what makes big dreams a reality, dream big, but start small.”

Yes, your company needs stability and routine. Comfort that the employees feel secure about and that your customers know that they can depend on. Our customers do not want to deal with a company that is always changing.

But they also want to feel that they are dealing with a company that deals in the latest technology and not yesterday ways of doing things.

“Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.” Henri de Lubac

There is an expression that creativity is the opposite of routine.

It’s easy to be so focused on current production that you don’t see the big picture of how productivity could be improved. So approach this challenge with an open mind. Once in a while, an outside consultant may be just what every company needs. The people within the company may have become so complacent with the daily routine that they no longer see what changes can help the company. Outside help might be needed.

In 2009, Starbucks brought in efficiency experts to help make drinks faster. One element was placing components in the right place as well as fine tuning various procedures. Starbucks had been serving coffee for over 20 years—and still found ways to increase productivity.

Balancing the need for a stable work environment with regular routines and the need to make changes to go with the changing times is a winning combination for improving your companies production. By Raúl Gorrín.

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sábado, 26 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Gorrín: Productivity means getting things done

By Raúl Gorrín. Productivity means getting things done. There will be times when things are not working out well. This is in all businesses. Can you imagine a company that never had a crises or never had times when things were not working out well? The successful companies come to terms with the situation.

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity.”

~John F. Kennedy

We are about to start a New Year. None of us has a crystal ball, but do we really need one? Will this be a year when our company is very successful or will this be a year that will test what our company and what we are made of. Will there be some obstacles that happen that we can not control happening? Will the government pass some regulations that challenge our companies survival? Will a big customer of ours change to another company that his cousin just started? We can not control these things from happening nor can we change them.

A smart leader will adapt the philosophy of que sera sera. “Que sera sera” has become a proverb in English, meaning “What will be will be”: an expression of cheerful fatalism. Rather than connoting despair, it typically offers relief from worry about future events beyond human control.

“Que sera, sera,

Whatever will be, will be.

The future's not ours to see,

Que sera, sera.”

Even though no one is totally certain about what the New Year will bring, the smartiest of businesspeople, say they are ready for whatever comes. The positive attitude reminds me of another catchy rhyme,

“As you travel on through life,

Whatever be your goal,

Look upon the doughnut

And not upon the hole.”

A smart leader comes to terms with the situation, they do not try to change what can not be changed and they accept these changes by taking measures to deal with the new circumstances and lead their companies forward. They are adjusting business models to the new

circumstance, shoring up revenues and moving some of their eggs out of the present baskets.

Being an alcoholic can destroy ones life. It is an illness that one can never recover from. How does one deal with such an illness and still have a normal life? The answer for almost eighty years has been in the Serenity Prayer .

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

The prayer became more widely known after being brought to the attention of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1941.

It is no difference in business. You can worry over changes in the economy, in tax laws, in almost any change that you have no control over or you can accept those changes and look for new opportunities and change your business plan to fit the new circumstance.

The 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva of the ancient Nalanda University suggested:

If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,

What reason is there for dejection?

And if there is no help for it,

What use is there in being glum?

The philosopher W.W. Bartley (1695) expressing a similar sentiment:

For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, try to find it;

If there be none, never mind it.

By Raúl Gorrín.

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jueves, 24 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Gorrín: To have a truly productive company, your work has to be noble

By Raúl Gorrín. Every noble work is bound to face problems and obstacles. It is important to check your goal and motivation thoroughly. One should be very truthful, honest, and reasonable. One’s actions should be good for others, and for oneself as well. Once a positive goal is chosen, you should decide to pursue it all the way to the end. Even if it is not realized, at least there will be no regret.

~The Dalai Lama

To have a truly productive company, your work has to be noble. A business consultant once told me that a fair price to charge is one which both the customer and the company consider fair. If you sell a product that actually will help others than that is business that will last. It will create true production. The Dalai Lama had some excellent points.

1. One should be very truthful, honest, and reasonable. –

You want a reputation for integrity an honesty. You want long term customers that would never go elsewhere. Your customers need to believe and know that your word is your bond.

2. Once a positive goal is chosen, you should decide to pursue it all the way to the end.

A number of years ago I was giving lectures to business people on how to be successful. That was when I met Don. Don was a very sought after speaker. He was booked months in advance and all his lectures were sold out. I asked him for his secrets. He said he only had one. Early on, he said that he knew that he was not such a good speaker, so he made up for it by being knowledgeable. He studied his speaking topics more than anyone else and knew more than anyone else. When he spoke there was so much to learn.

When asked for advice, comedian Steve Martin likes to say, "Be so good they can't ignore you."

Whether you're just starting out in your career or trying to get to the next level, your goal should be to master your craft to the point where people can't help but notice.

Have you ever wondered why no matter what you do, no matter how productive you are, that you’re not getting ahead? That was until I realized that my productivity wasn’t that good. Have you ever thought that while you’re good at what you do, you may not be at the level of being “so good they can’t ignore you”?

When choosing a goal or a career the present belief is to go into a field of work that you love, a career that you have a passion for. I always had a passion for baseball.

As a child I imagined that I would one day be in the major leagues.

One problem…

Although I was good at baseball, I was not great. All the passion in the world would never have gotten me a call from the major baseball leagues.

It is true that you need to be passionate about your work. But you may have to get passionate for a field in which you can be the very best at what you do. Although we are taught these days that that we should “do what makes us happy” and that we should make sure that our jobs reflect who we are.

What we believe will make us happy may not be who were really are.

When it comes to picking a career we need to follow the words of the Dalai Lama, we need to pick a field that is good for others. To be good for others we need to do something for which we truly have a talent for. Where we can make a difference. Where we can really become the best. Where we can become so good that the world can not ignore us and it will then show in our production and numbers. This is a time where initially we need to pick skills over passion. By Raúl Gorrín.

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miércoles, 23 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Gorrín: There are two ways to become more productive.

1. Increase the amount of money taken into the company. In simple words, you need to increase sales.

2. Lower the cost.

By Raúl Gorrín.-Today we will talk about different ways to increase the sales in a company. One such way is to increase the goodwill that the company has with its community.

Many years ago I worked for a huge dental center. They must have had over 25 different dentist working for them. Once a year they ran a charity event. Each customer who could not afford dental work would get to pick either a free extraction (tooth pulled) or a filling in one tooth. Every dentist and worker that worked for them was expected to volunteer for this event. The event was promoted by all the local newspapers for free. It was mentioned on the local news stations on radio and telelvision. All this was done at no charge. All the news outlets wanted to be involved in this charity event.

On the day of the event several TV stations filmed what was going on with the charity event.

YES! This was a charity event. And all the work that day was done for free.

Yet all the free publicity that this dental center received was worth a fortune.

I guess that you could call this a Share Value initiative. Charity and helping the community while at the same time the dental office gained the most.

This story happens to be about a dental office but it could easily work in any business.

The CEO has another idea that they would do up to $25 thousand dollars of free work on someone who wrote an essay explaining why they should be picked the winner. He got one of the newspapers to run the contest and for three months, he got almost daily coverage for his contest.

Every business should look into helping their communities. Empower Your Community to Promote Your Business. Large corporations harness the power of their communities, and so can you. Yes, your customers and fans can promote your business for you! In this article, we’ll explain a few ways in which your community can help promote your business and how you can help make it happen. By Raúl Gorrín.

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martes, 22 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Gorrín: Leaders can take responsibility for their own mistakes in public in order to be a model of this behavior

Por Raúl Gorrín.- Productivity in a company is increased if we increase the ability for the company to work at close to maximum efficiency. So what are some of the ways to increase efficiency? One of the many ways , is for its workers to take responsibility for what they have done. If they never take responsibility then how can they learn from the error of their ways. If they deny their mistakes, then what is to stop them from keep making the same mistakes over and over.

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learned nothing. “ Henry Ford

The best way to set up an atmosphere of responsibility in a company is for its leaders and management to teach by their own behavior.

“Don’t find fault , find a remedy!” again Henry Ford.

The result of finger pointing can be detrimental to everyone involved, particularly in the workplace, researchers say. In an organizations where blame is the norm, group members are likely to be less creative and perform poorly. The blamer also takes a hit. When an individual is always pointing to external reasons for your mistakes you won't learn from those mistakes, so it hinders your ability to learn and become more effective.

And then there's the kick-the-dog effect.

Globovisión, Raúl Gorrín, Raúl Antonio Gorrín, Seguros La Vitalicia Raúl Gorrín, Medios de comunicación, Venezuela, Gobierno, Empresarios, Emprendedor,

"It's the kick- the-dog effect where if someone high in the hierarchy makes a mistake and blames the person below them for the mistake and that person blames the person below them and so on, and when there's no one else to blame that person goes home and kicks the dog,"

"When we blame, we give away our power." — Greg Anderson

Habitual blaming over time perpetuates bitterness, resentment, and powerlessness, as the victim suffers. Often, those who are the target of your blame have little idea (or could care less) about how you really feel. You only hurt yourself by being a prisoner of your own bitterness and resentment. Your feelings may be justified, but they will not help you become happy, healthy, and successful. Your workers will not respect you and they will resent you. They will feel like they should not try to help the company because they are getting blamed for things they never did. But as the ‘kick the dog’ scenario explains that feeling of blame and resentment will spread through the company, as everyone starts to spread the blame and point the finger elsewhere.

This will hurt the companies chances of being as productive as it should.

To boost performance, companies might want to keep blaming others to a minimum.

It's important for leaders and organization managers who are trying to shape their cultures in a way to improve performance and creativity. If you're a leader, don't blame other people, at least not publicly. You might want to offer praise in public, but if you have to blame someone, do it in private.

Leaders can take responsibility for their own mistakes in public in order to be a model of this behavior. Some companies already do this by throwing so-called failure parties in which people talk about their mistakes and learn from them. By Raúl Gorrín.

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lunes, 21 de diciembre de 2015

Raúl Antonio Gorrín: A Productive Budget

By Raúl Antonio Gorrín. Productivity is important in any business, and there are several ways to measure it. But the best way is to keep it simple, clear and actionable. Companies prepare budgets . Budgeted costs allow them to set prices, project sales and estimate profits. Companies base budgets on historical numbers, similar processes and calculated values. The budgets predict costs and revenues over a fixed period into the future. Once the budget period is finished, the company can determine actual costs and revenues as it books sales and pays invoices. It assigns the actual values to the same cost and profit centers it used for the budget, and it can compare the budgeted numbers with the actual figures.

When companies compare budgets with actual figures, there are often differences called variance. Variance is the number obtained by subtracting the lower of the actual and budget numbers for a particular item from the higher one. Reasons for variance can include changes in sales, changes in material cost or changes in labor cost. Variance can be favorable, if costs are lower or revenue is higher, or unfavorable for higher costs or lower revenue. Variance results from cost or price changes and from volume changes.

Another area of variance is when a sale is made we estimate the amount of labor time it would take to complete the job. That means measuring the hours—the ratio of budgeted hours to actual hours, that is. If 100 hours are budgeted for a job and it gets done in 90 hours, then productivity is at 111 percent. If it takes 110 hours to complete the job, productivity is at 91 percent.

Production staff need the hours so they can hold their crews accountable, and they need the hours to know how to schedule the work. As hours are worked, production inputs the hours on the tracking tool, so it can generate productivity reports.

Setting up these systems isn’t complicated. Keeping up with imputing data is the difficult part, but it’s worthwhile to know how to correct and improve performance and projects. As jobs are completed, the productivity numbers indicate if the estimated hours are more than or less than what was projected.

If a job takes twice as long as projected, you might find that you in reality lose money taking the job. There might be opportunities to increase productivity in any or all of these areas. If not, there’s a business decision to be made about the price of the job. It’s time to ask for an increase.

Keeping productivity at 100 percent or better is important to being profitable. It’s no secret we work in a labor-intensive industry, so driving results is a matter of understanding, tracking and reacting to productivity. By Raúl Gorrín.

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