Showing posts with label (RE) Imagine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label (RE) Imagine. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Ted Tuesday: Alan Iny— Reigniting Creativity In Business

"True creativity requires you and your company to constantly doubt your current boxes and eventually replace them with new ones. In an ever-changing environment, no idea is good forever."





Good Morning Folks,

The face of business is changing and whether an individual or corporation, the pressure is on to innovate. Employment in America is increasingly operating in a new reality. The constancy of change requires today's career employee to think and act differently, because the path to the American Dream is no longer a guaranteed right of passage.


Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Global competition for jobs is fierce. The employer-employee pact is over and traditional job security is a thing of the past.

CREATIVITY is key to surviving and thriving against all odds. Alan Iny's Ted talk is very much aligned to our way of thinking.

That's why FSO's core strength is to (re)IMAGINE new and better ways of doing business. To give our clients the people, solutions, technology, and cost efficiencies to ensure a fundamental transformation from the back office as we know it today

It’s a paradox. Creativity has never been more essential to competitiveness in the business world, but the critical approach to practical creativity in organizations is often lacking. Alan Iny offers a key to the well-meaning exhortation to “think outside the box:” Apply doubt to the very models and philosophies that make up the box itself.

Even the greatest minds know the frustration of trying to come up with a brilliant idea but constantly ending up with boring thoughts and a trash can filled with wasted paper. Alan Iny suggests a new perspective for reviving creativity in your business. Believe it or not, says Iny, the key to creativity is doubt. Watch this fascinating talk that encourages viewers to adopt a new approach to thinking “outside the box.”


As the senior specialist for creativity and scenarios, Alan Iny has trained thousands of executives and BCG consultants on how to think creatively. A member of the firm’s strategy leadership team, he has vast experience in advising companies worldwide in innovation, scenarios, transformation, organization design and change management across industries. In 2013, Alan launched “Thinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity,” written with Luc de Brabandere, and published by Random House.


Here is an excerpt that was originally published in The Economist Group’s Lean back marketing blog.

Seeking new insights into who your markets and customers are, what they really want, and how best to reach and engage them requires thinking in new boxes. A “box,” in our definition, is a belief, concept, working hypothesis, or other mental model you use to interpret the world in front of you. 
True creativity requires you and your company to constantly doubt your current boxes and eventually replace them with new ones. In an ever-changing environment, no idea is good forever. 
The brain’s hardwiring will tend to lead you and your organization to hold on to tired assumptions and constraints. You’re likely to be seduced by a natural bias toward ideas that confirm, rather than contradict, your current way of seeing things.
Henry Ford famously failed to heed even obvious market signals (and insistent colleagues) suggesting that customers were evolving to want different styles and colors after the phenomenal success of his simple all-black Model T. In the 1970s and 1980s, executives at Hindustan Lever Limited assumed that customers for laundry detergent in India were primarily affluent individuals willing to pay for Surf; they didn’t notice that Nirma, a low-cost competitor, appealed to a growing segment of lower-income customers who hadn’t used any detergent before. 
As you seek to understand your organization’s customers and market, stay open to multiple interpretations of the data you collect. There are different plausible segmentations of any customer group, many legitimate ways to break down the market, and multiple ways of perceiving the underlying desires of your customers. 
Consider listing and then challenging your most fundamental beliefs about your customers and markets. Who do you currently think of as your most loyal customers? Ask bold questions that take you and your colleagues outside of your comfort zone. If you are one of the world’s largest designers and retailers of lingerie, what if 10 years from now, 95 percent of your customers were men? If you lead the world’s most popular online search engine—think Google—what if, just 10 years from now, most of your customers were looking to you instead for driverless cars? 
The first step to practical creativity is challenging some of your existing boxes. If you manage this, then you can arrive at a very successful new box simply by changing the way you think about your customers, your competitors, or your own company.
Watch Video: Have a look at Alan's short 8-minute talk, which is accessible by this link which will take you directly to the Ted site.

TED@BCG was an event produced by TED in conjunction with their partner, the Boston Consulting Group.


At FSO all of us strive to be remarkable, not average. FSO provides an environment that rewards innovation, is rich in resources, and respects the incredibly talented team we’ve built over the last six years. 
Personal, Passionate and Productive, we get the job done to perfection every moment and every day.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.


Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer  

Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TED Tuesdays on MitchWeiner.com highlights some of today's most intriguing ideas. Look for more talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more— HERE.  




Tuesday, December 13, 2016

TED Tuesday: (re)IMAGINE— The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers With Adam Grant

"Know that being quick to start but slow to finish can boost your creativity, that you can motivate yourself by doubting your ideas and embracing the fear of failing to try, and that you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."







Good Morning Folks,

Today's speaker is Adam Grant, Wharton’s top-rated teacher. How do creative people come up with great ideas? Adam Grant studies "originals": thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure. "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," Grant says. "You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

Adam has been recognized as one of HR’s most influential international thinkers, BusinessWeek’s favorite professor, one of the world’s 40 best business professors under forty. Grant was tenured at Wharton while still in his twenties and has been honored with the Excellence in Teaching Award for every class he has taught. His first book, Give and Take, was a New York Times bestseller translated into 27 languages and named one of the best books of 2013 by Amazon, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal—as well as one of Oprah’s riveting reads and Harvard Business Review’s ideas that shaped management. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NFL, Merck, Goldman Sachs, Disney Pixar, the United Nations, and the U.S. Army and Navy. Grant earned his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan and his B.A. from Harvard College. 

According to Grant, "Know that being quick to start but slow to finish can boost your creativity, that you can motivate yourself by doubting your ideas and embracing the fear of failing to try, and that you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

Have a GREAT day!

 Mitch


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"Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold."
~~ Maurice Setter
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Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TED Tuesdays on MitchWeiner.com highlights some of today's most intriguing ideas. Look for more talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more— HERE.  



About FSO Onsite Outsourcing
Recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation's fastest growing companies for the fourth consecutive year, and lead by industry pioneer, Mitch Weiner, FSO's growth and success can be attributed to making a positive and powerful impact on their clients' bottom lines, as well as their employees' careers and lives.






Tuesday, October 11, 2016

TED Tuesday: It’s Time to Re(IMAGINE) Death

"Miller thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. Take the time to savor this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think on death and honor life."










Good Morning Folks,

At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love.

Death is a subject no one likes to talk about. Yet it is one of the only certainties of life. Any of our families could deal with a health crisis, accident or aging parent and find themselves totally unprepared for the decisions they will face. So for that day, and with the goal of using these TED Tuesdays to enrich you both personally and professionally, I share B.J. Miller's "It’s Time to Redesign Death".

Sue Campbell notes, "Miller was a sophomore in college when, horsing around with friends, he climbed onto a parked commuter rail car and was electrocuted. He lost part of one arm and the bottom of both legs as a result. That, he says, was the beginning of his “formal relationship with death.”

Now a physician working at the Zen Hospice guest house in San Francisco, Calif., he focuses on providing palliative care and on fundamentally changing the American health care system. Right now, medical care centers on the disease. Miller argues that it should center on people — what patients want to do and what makes them feel good — taking into account caregivers as helpers and healers.

Miller says “life and health and health care can become about making life more wonderful, rather than just less horrible.”

The video is 20 minutes long and lays out rich ideas. Take the time to savor this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think on death and honor life:

 

As B.J. says, "I got to redesign my life around this fact, and I tell you it has been a liberation to realize you can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left, like that snowball lasting for a perfect moment, all the while melting away. If we love such moments ferociously, then maybe we can learn to live well -- not in spite of death, but because of it. Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination."

I hope that you learned something new and valuable today from this powerful TED talk on patient-centered compassion. Thanks to Sue Campbell and the Next Avenue Blog for tipping me to this talk.


Have a great day and thanks for being a part of our amazing journey.


Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer  

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Remember if you are not smiling then you are doing it wrong."
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Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TED Tuesdays on MitchWeiner.com highlights some of today's most intriguing ideas. Look for more talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more— HERE

Monday, December 7, 2015

Let’s (re) IMAGINE!

"Let’s (re) IMAGINE capitalizes on our unique visionary skill to see something that does not now exist, not just more of the same of what you have right now."










Good Morning Folks,

A new report from our client, Grant Thornton, reveals 40 percent of businesses worldwide are outsourcing back-office processes or plan to do so in the near future. A catalyst for growth and innovation, outsourcing can free up resources tied into back-office processes and put them into higher value-add functions, helping to drive business growth.

Our clients and prospects are telling us that they want a different experience; that they don’t want to do business in a traditional way.  That’s where "Let's (re) IMAGINE!" comes in. We bring a refreshing and strategic approach focused on delivering real results.

Recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest growing companies three consecutive years, FSO’s founders are industry pioneers who’ve introduced transformative solutions to thousands of the world’s best-known brands, and created tens of thousands career opportunities for a “forgotten-demographic” over 30 years.  

After building two previous outsourcing companies to 100+ million revenue and acquisition, we got back into the business as FSO with a blank canvas and a desire to add value and a personal touch to traditional services. 

At FSO, the customer experience is our greatest differentiator. The corner stone of our strategy has been "Let’s (re) IMAGINE" which capitalizes on our unique visionary skill to see something that does not now exist, not just more of the same of what you have right now. We apply a productive combination of People + Solutions + Technology to enable possibilities previously out of reach.

We start each initial consultation by considering “out of the box” alternatives and options, even as crazy as they may seem:

“You’ve always done it this way. Why?“

“What’s preventing you from growing into all you deserve to be? 


"How do we pursue our goals with the resources we have?"

               “If you could design a firm completely from scratch, and have it any way you    
               want, what would it look like?”

A partnership with FSO helps fuel business growth through innovation, driving down costs, improving business processes, streamlining operations, and helping organizations to become more competitive. 

In addition, customers choose FSO because we .... 

Improve productivity and service levels.
Provide five-star, white-glove service and hospitality.
Control spending and improving profitability.
Deliver significant and positive changes in employee expertise, attitude and results. 
Bring your brand values to life and make visitors feel warmly welcomed.

To come up with a custom solution for you, our analysts will go in and take a look back office people, equipment, technology, in order to find cost savings and streamline processes to do business better.

With "Let's (re) IMAGINE," by coming up with new ideas and total solutions, we open our clients to new possibilities and new revenue streams. We (re) IMAGINE their guest experience through a very high-end personal touch and concierge approach creating a unique guest experience – from the First Impression to a complete hospitality experience – FSO are delivering something special.

In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, there isn’t room for inefficiency at any level or to tie 46% of management time up stabilizing processes. By contrast we'll operate your back-office processes at a world-class level, eliminating the hidden costs in running these departments. Done well, outsourcing can reward companies by reducing their costs, giving them access to expertise they may not be able to afford or find in-house, and freeing them to devote more of their time to their core business activities

Managing an outsourcing initiative is challenging. Doing so with the wrong partner is nearly impossible. If you have any questions concerning your back office, whether it is your traditional outsourced services or you are considering examining some your other supporting office roles, we are here to help.

Call me personally at (212) 204-1193 and we'll take the conversation to the next level.

We wish you a joyous holiday season and all the wealth and success you deserve in the New Year.

Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.




Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer  
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"If you want to change who you are, change what you do."
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Monday, April 27, 2015

Always Do The Right Thing

"It's about how we treat and care about our people. How we motivate them and continue to develop our folks.  Folks do the right thing. Trust and believe in your leadership. Always do the right thing and love life."








Good Morning Folks, 

Greetings to the greatest people in the on site outsourcing business. I hope everyone had an awesome weekend and was able to spend a bit of time relaxing and clearing your mind so you are fresh and ready for another awesome week at FSO.

As we grow and look forward to a prosperous future, we will never forget the Personal, Passionate & Productive mindset from which we began.

We promised you that from the beginning that we will improve service, reduce/control cost and take care of the people. We are taking a step forward to never losing sight of the promise by going back to the basics.

Because our employees are our connections to clients, we need to ensure that they have a clear understanding of what FSO does, stands for and is achieving for you each and every day. That’s why we established Mitch’s Institute of Training (MIT). 

Across FSO USA, we have been making great strides in our commitment and the Power of Focus to impact the Client Experience and ensure that we execute and deliver operational expertise. These past two weeks have been packed full of strong activity, great meetings and the launch of the MIT will be one of if not our strongest commitments and training tools to ensure everyone across FSO is continually learning and growing

One thing we know and that is momentum is how businesses thrive and grow, and our momentum is rocking – so Train the Trainer is in full motion through our MIT and we begin the next phase. Just imagine ONE TEAM across FSO that know everything about the company there are part of and what we stand for and what and how we sell and why clients bought us and why prospects buy us and how that carries forward from our sales front end to perfect execution and delivery on the back end through operations – our Promise to Promise – our re imagine – our Solutions and our Ideas, Innovation and client Cost Saves. 

The first MIT meeting allowed for our employees to walk away with eye-opening insights. The floor was opened to exchanging stories of success, to getting to know each other better and to finding inspiration in the powered of shared experience. Missy Adriazola, our Director of Training put it this way:
"We kicked off MIT 2 weeks ago with Mitch sharing his vision of FSO- past, present and future.  It is crucial that everyone plays their part for the future and growth of FSO.  But, with that comes learning about what we do, and how we do it.  Last week, with Round 2, Bomsi shared a little more detail about the company history and the expectations ahead.  And, since we’ve all learned “what” we do, who FSO is and Mitch’s vision, it’s time to get to work on the “how to” portion of training.

As head of training at FSO, I could not be more excited to share that there are great things in the works for the next round of MIT.  The promise to practice from the training team is that we ensure that you all have the tools you need to perform at your best and teach your teams to do so each and every day.  We are ONE team made up of individuals who CARE about each other and our clients. This is a huge differentiator in the marketplace and how FSO sells and closes deals daily.  We hire those who have the DNA of fire, skip and twinkle.  We look for those who are hospitality driven and go above and beyond every day." 
As we continue to build our company culture together, which you know includes positive energy, honesty, trust, respect, integrity/ethics, warmth, transparency, and CARE. You will only be able to achieve success in your role through solid communication - but talk is cheap. The question is: do your words matter and influence the outcome? Do you really connect with your team? Can we be doing better?
  • How the operation could run better, more efficient?
  • Are there better ways we can be organizing our areas better?
  • Are there ways we can order things like supplies and equipment to save our clients’ money?
  • Can we be more productive in the way we maintain the cleanliness of all areas?
  • Service with a Smile means just that and how are we ensuring every contact with an end user or guest is perfect and special?
  • What ways can we improve Hospitality?

There is nothing to wait for or direction needed from our clients in finding ways to (re) Imagine and make things better – your ideas and expertise is exactly why we are entrusted to run our clients operations – they outsourced to us and we must take the opportunity to show them why their decision was the best they ever made and we will deliver on our Promise to Practice.

You will know you've connected with your team when: they go the extra mile and always give the extra effort, they say positive things and provide unsolicited appreciation, they demonstrate trust and have an unguarded openness, they express themselves and communicate frequently, they feel good about their role and their value to FSO, they have positive energy, and you have growing team synergy. 

Our company is all about PERSONAL. Love our employees and love our clients.. and we should never stop thinking of how to wow them. The Power of Focus and the Power of Positive Energy will always be key to our future success. 

MIT presents us with an opportunity to take time and (re) IMAGINE the services we provide to our clients, and the road we pave for our employees —with the idea that we are one team, one family.

Thank you for your partnership and continued support. We look forward to sharing our success as the MIT program moves forth and grows.

Have a great week and thanks for being a part of our amazing journey.


Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer  

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Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing" 
~~ Albert Schweitzer
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Reduce Costs, Increase Productivity And Retain Your Most Valued Employees


“Creating a Positive Workplace And Good Attitudes Are Contagious.”






Good Morning Folks,

A positive workplace reduces costs, increases productivity and retains your most valued employees. 

You can start building a positive work environment with these ideas:

==> Appreciation
Equip each staff member with thank-you notes to offer to co-workers who have done something special. Create a monthly program that recognizes workers’ accomplishments.

==>Feedback
Create an efficient system for employees to share feedback with management. Respond to each comment. Even if you can’t act on it, thank the worker for the input. Consider whether the idea can be altered to improve the workplace.

==>Tolerance
Don’t allow rude remarks or bullying. In addition to violating basic human decency, intolerance affects the bottom line. Research shows that rude behavior reduces productivity. Instead, encourage direct but professional conversations. Educate those who unintentionally make an offensive remark. 

Final thought: If you still think that the negativity in your workplace is too big a task to take on, consider this: Almost half of employees say they plan to leave their organizations when the economy improves. 

Their drive to find new jobs is propelled by negative workplaces that foster lack of trust and unfair treatment, according to the “Deloitte Ethics and Workplace Survey.” 

Thanks to the Work Place Training Center and to you for sharing this moment with us.


Have a GREAT Day,

Love Life!



Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer
  


Monday, July 29, 2013

Business Transformation: (re)Imagine or Bust


"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." 
~~ Charles Darwin








Good Morning Folks,

I believe complacency is when innovation ends. The advantage every business has, but few in our industry leverage to the advantage that we do, is the ability to innovate and reinvent. So many great companies lose their edge and end up playing catch-up until they're obsolete. That’s not going to happen here.

As an owner and CEO, I am keenly aware that rapid change in business and technology is the “new normal.”  The only way for our company to survive, let alone thrive, is to continuously reinvent and redefine— everything.

This means we can’t go backward, and we can’t stand still. We can’t rest on our laurels and we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done — even if we are doing our best, we need to keep doing it better.

Because at FSO, we never stop rethinking, refreshing and (re)Imagining a better future for our clients. 

We strive to give our customers the ability to do what they can’t currently do but would want to if they only knew it was possible.

The basic premises that we hold are these: 

1. Nothing lasts (including our services, even if they’re current hits; competition is relentless) 

2. Nothing is supposed to last (we don’t expect long product life cycles; that’s the reality in business today) 

3. It’s good that nothing lasts (because if it did last, we—i.e. everyone in the business—would copy each other blatantly and we’d all look the same, and we’d all become complacent, and we’d all lose our customers’ interest, and our margins would disappear) 

4. We’re making darn sure that nothing lasts (we’re always obsessively putting our time and talent into creating the next wave of new exciting services in order to build our brand, our market share and our income stream)

In the coming years, dramatic new developments are going to be flying at us so fast, from so many places and so many competitors, that it will be easier than ever to become overwhelmed. In a transformational time, disruption multiplies. The only solution to this increasing dilemma is to become experts at reinventing our companies, our products, our services … essentially everything we do.

It is becoming more relevant that change has become a necessity, rather than something companies need to work with or around. My advice to other CEOs is to do as we are doing: focus your best talent on innovating instead of competing with their top priority being customer service.

Have a GREAT day, and...

Love Life!





Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer
  
About the Author:
Welcome to the fastest growing onsite outsourcing company in the nation! Led by Mitch Weiner, co-founder and industry pioneer, FSO is "the" award winning enterprise-wide outsourcing and people solutions firm servicing a multitude of clients across North America.

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