These are collections of few small notes from my diary about general things in life.

May be call itself improvement points. I am uploading it on the scribd so that it may be helpful to some other people too.

Write down every thing

Every time your boss asks you to do something, write it down. Every time he asks you to cancel something, write it down. Every time he engages you in something away from an on-going project How much time you have got : Every time your boss assigns you a new project, find out (from him, or elsewhere) how much time it's going to take. Now add that to your current workload, and divide it by the number of hours of your working day. Make everything measureable : Now factor in the deadline your boss has given you. This will allow you to negotiate with him, more time. Have a electronic proof of everything he told you. Everything factual must be documented somewhere. It doesn't have to be email. Whip out your laptop's camera during in-house to take minutes of the meeting. If he's told you something verbally, send him a mail at the end of the day with a brief of his statements (facts only!) and how you're working on it. Good interpersonal and professional relationships with colleagues at the workplace is an absolute must because at higher managerial levels, it is more about maintaining co-ordination between various forces at work. Organizations look for all rounder candidates who can take an active interest in the diversified activities of the company. Make sure you emerge as the potential leader in the eyes of the management.

Make your boss believe you are in office when you are not.
Work late everyday Build a reputation of being a tireless worker and no one will dare question your commitment to the company. Start sending some midnight emails. This sure shot sign of robotic dedication will make your bosses and colleagues think that you arewell, a robot. By doing this you will set new standards in commitment, and will be requested by your superiors to give pep talks to your team members. Plan ahead on the drivel you will fill their heads with because you certainly dont want to tell them the real secret that drives you to work late and send emails at three in the morning. The secret tactic: Once you have written a bunch of messages, set email timers and Outlook will deliver them exactly when you want. An idea can change your life You can be out watching a movie and have the rest of the world believe that you are slogging off your backside in front of your PC. Obviously emails sent from your iPhone or blackberry can help you achieve this. The only niggle is the sent from blackberry/iPhone footer which will give away your entire game.
Asutosh Bhavsar, asutoshb@gmail.com

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The secret tactic: Reconfigure your handheld and disable the auto-signature feature, so that your emails appear to come straight out of your desktop. Manage your Instant Messenger : Given the fact that youre always hard at work and want no one to question you about your whereabouts (get it?), you will have to turn your instant messenger into an alibi. The (not so) secret tactic: Either disable your messengers idle setting or change the status message to Really busy, dont disturb giving plausible reasons why you dont have time to participate in a petty chatter. Set the Scene : Meeting a hot gal for coffee (and more) during work time and dont want your colleagues (and bosses) to go sniffing around for you? Secret Tactic: Simply swing by your office in the morning and make your presence felt by greeting everyone, especially those youre answerable to. Then turn on your PC, throw your jacket over your chair and place a semi filled cup of coffee on your desk. Then creep out of your cubicle as inconspicuously as possible. For the rest of the day, colleagues (and bosses) will think you've just stepped out.

Make you meetings work

Meetings should never be used as an occasion to waste time. And the trick to having an effective no nonsense meeting is to make sure you plan beforehand. You can create some very useful and productive meetings by strictly adhering to some of these useful guidelines Prepare : You can never afford to neglect this one crucial point. Thorough preparation is really the key to effective meetings. As with all other things, the better prepared and organised you are, the more effective, efficient and productive will you be. Unfortunately, most executives and even midlevel managers attend these meetings without adequate preparation. All the topics and problems that you want to get sorted out should be predefined and set out on paper. And every person attending the meeting should be in a position to contribute their part. You dont want slackers and loafers using an important company meeting to drink coffee, look intelligent and thank their stars they could waste two good hours and get paid to do so. Only invite those people whose presence is needed : Meetings can be truly productive only if they are attended only by those who are an integral of the issue that is going to be going to be discussed in the meeting. Its often seen that a number of employees attend meetings and discussions solely for the sake of attendance and quietly sit through it. If you feel that a particular employee doesnt have a valid reason to be present in a meeting, dont invite that person. Some employees can contribute only for a particular part of the meeting. In this case mention this point in the agenda, so that they dont have to sit and waste their time after they have had their day and done their part. Create an extra short time frame : The best possible way to making your meetings productive and efficient is to schedule a very limited time for the meeting. So if you feel that a certain issue can be resolved within a 30 minutes, schedule a 15 minute impromptu with the participants, ask them to

Asutosh Bhavsar, asutoshb@gmail.com

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put all their questions, suggestions and their doubts on a piece of paper and then spend the next 15 minutes getting the questions answered.

Cutting down the meeting time by half will automatically instil a sense of urgency in the participants. When people are aware that they have a limited time to argue and decide, they too are eager to reach a conclusion much more quickly, which works great for everyone. Cut to the Chase : You can easily make your meetings shorter and arrive at a conclusion a lot quicker by skipping the small talk in the beginning. Maybe your colleague cant wait to share the news of his sons century in the school cricket match or the fact that he has purchased a new car. These however, are things that can be shared with ones colleagues on the way out of the meeting, not at the beginning. Request answers rather than discussing the questions : Most company meetings get turned into a respectable excuse for wasting time because its rarely ever the case that any ground-breaking decisions are arrived at by the end of a single meeting. And more often than not, we all know the answer we are going to get even before the meeting starts. A meeting that changes nothing is a waste of time. So instead of going through the process of presenting the questions and debating the answers, it would be better to ask all the participants to prepare their answers well before the meeting starts. This will allow you to move from presenting the information to reaching a decision which is what a meeting is for anyhow. Take full charge : Your goal is not to have a successful meeting but to successfully accomplish a goal by having a meeting. As a boss, you should do everything thats possible to reduce the number of meetings you have, or at least minimise the time spent in meetings. In the words of Donald Trump If a leader cant control his subordinates, hes not a leader, hes not a good businessman, hes going to be a failure, whether its a he or a she, its going to be bad.

Tips to impress you boss

You cant really survive for long at your workplace if you are not among your boss favourite few. Even if you are way too far to be the perfect employee, you must atleast make sure that you show up like you are contributing 110 per cent each time something is assigned to you. Read on for tips to impress your boss. Dedication : If youre coming to work, just show up and work at your best. You must not perform half-heartedly. Put your entire soul and self into the job. You must look your best too. Be Positive and Optimistic : You must project a positive outlook and opt for an optimistic approach whenever you take up new jobs, challenges and risks, meet new people and even when you walk into your boss room. Such attitude and consistency, when noticed by your employers, also convinces them that you are actually enthusiastic and thrilled about your work and that people around you are inspired by your painstaking attitude and that they strive for a better performance too. This is then a chain reaction which makes your employers fond of you as you slowly become a lifeline for fellow workers too.

Asutosh Bhavsar, asutoshb@gmail.com

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Strive for more : Dont have your nose up in the air once you have obtained some space in your boss good books. Remember, you have to maintain the same level of energy and enthusiasm and perform even better. Dont let the spirit die.

Office Jealousy - How To Deal With It?

No matter how congenial and nice, an overachiever is eventually going to incite jealousy in his colleagues. Here are a few Xpert to help you handle jealous colleagues Examine yourself first Before blaming your colleagues, try examining your own behavior and manners. Are you, in any way responsible for inciting the jealousy of your colleagues? Did you rub your colleagues the wrong way by bragging about your promotion? Often its not our success, but our behavior that draws ire from colleagues. If you feel somehow responsible for your problems, tone down your elitist attitude. Change Your Image : While you cant change everything about yourself for your colleagues, a slight change in your image can enable you to diffuse jealousy directed towards you. If your colleagues see that you work not only for yourself. but your entire team, your success will be viewed but with admiration, not jealousy. Give Credit to Others : When you legitimately deserve to share the credit for a successful decision or project, just do it. When you are selfless enough share the spotlight with your colleagues whenever they deserve it, it becomes harder for them to be jealous of you. Its really as simple as saying Yeah, the project was a success. But had it not been for Rajesh and his incredible artwork, it wouldnt have looked half as good. Disengage From Gossip : Often people deal with jealous colleagues by fighting fire with fire, and inflict considerable damage on your jealous colleagues. Instead, you should be magnanimous enough to take the high road. Concentrate on the hard work that got you that envious promotion. Find Friends in High Places : Jealous people never operate alone. They tend to use their strength in numbers to good effect. If you feel that your promotion doesnt shield you from their hatred, you need to make friends higher up in the food chain. While seeing you with the top brass fuel their jealousy further, it will also make them think thrice before they display their malice. However, dont turn away allies and friends who have stuck with you till now.

Tips on writing an effective resume

An average HR consultant has the attention span of an infant when it comes to reading resumes that of a few seconds. It is up to YOU to make his few seconds meaningful for you. You are one Among Thousands : A good job receives 100s of resumes. Yours has to be flawless. Don't bore your readers with useless details - or you'll be just another piece of paper.

Asutosh Bhavsar, asutoshb@gmail.com

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Resume Presentation : Use a regular size paper (8.5 x 11 inches), preferably printed in Arial font (easy on the eyes, clear typeface) Leave double spacing between lines and always start at the left margin, except in the case of your name and address. Details : Your name and address come first on the resume. Then your objective, work experience and responsibilities held during previous employments. Then comes your educational qualifications your institute's name. Your Achievements : Mention professional accomplishments which are in sync with the company's progress. The languages you can speak, read and write should clearly mentioned. Do not forget to sign the resume. Many people forget. It is always better to confine yourself to one page. Most people do not fancy turning pages to read a resume

Effective Unorthodox Strategies To Increase Sales

Sales is not proportional to money spent on marketing. Spending millions at the Super Bowl can get you audience, but not customers. You can google for effective marketing strategies or how to increase sales or 5 steps to marketing success. There are thousands of articles written by experts on how to do that. This is not one of them. Surprise Them : John Sculley, in his must read biography Odyssey - Pepsi To Apple, tells us some fantastic things about planet sales. Pepsi, the underdog wanted to take on to the cola market over the giant Coke. Cokes competitive advantage was its package shape, the representation of the bottle. The bottle was so popular that it didnt represent just the package, but the product itself. Pepsi spent millions of dollars into years of research coming up with various bottle designs but it was not easy to shake the empire in Atlanta. They needed to change the ground rules, to shift the perspective. Under the guidance of Sculley, Pepsi accepted they couldnt touch what the winner had already created. They decided to add a new rule to the game. Sculley rewrote the competition by not fighting on the shape of the package, but its size. Surveys revealed no matter how much Pepsi the consumers odered, they consumed it. It was only hard to get inside the house. Pepsi came up with new larger bottle sizes and various different packages. They won. It Might Not Actually Be a Weakness : Back in 60s, people complained about the thickness of the Heinz ketchup, it took too long to pour. The obvious solutions to the problem would have been to change the packaging or the formula itself. H.J. Heinz had different ideas. He came up with marketing strategies that said thick is better and started advertising the product as the slowest pouring ketchup. Thicker, richer in ingredients, better taste was the new message. They won too. A New Dimension : There is some doubt on the authenticity of this story but anyway it never fails to teach that there are unexplored dimensions as a solution to every problem. A toothpaste company asked its marketing staff to come up with strategies to increase the sales. Making the taste of the toothpaste better, adding more useful ingredients and advertising it, discounts, schemes were some of the suggested ideas. But, one idea that stood out was to increase the size of the nozzle. Bigger nozzle, more consumption, more sales. Although the customer base remained the same, the legend says the implementation of this strategy increased the sales by 6 percent.

Asutosh Bhavsar, asutoshb@gmail.com

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