SkillInside

  Ideas are the currency of the twenty-first century. The ability to persuade, to change hearts and minds, is perhaps the single greatest skill that will give you a competitive edge in the knowledge economy — an age where ideas matter more than ever. Some economists believe that persuasion is responsible for  generating one-quarter  or more of America’s total national income. As our economy has evolved from an agrarian to an industrial to a knowledge-based one, successful people in nearly every profession have become those capable of convincing others to take action on their ideas. Think about the role of persuasion in our daily lives: Entrepreneurs persuade investors to back their startups. Job candidates persuade recruiters to hire them. Politicians persuade people to vote for them. Leaders persuade employees to take specific plans of action. CEOs persuade analysts to write favorable reports about their companies. Salespeople persuade customers to choose their product o...

 It  It Can Help You Reach All Your Goals. Here's How Kaizen helps factories run better. It works for self-improvement, too. You have  big, ambitious goals  and even bigger dreams. But how do you get from where you are now to making those dreams come true? The answer may surprise you: By aiming for just 1 percent improvement. This counterintuitive insight comes from an  essay  AllTopStartups founder  Thomas Oppong  published on Medium and Quartz that's gotten lots of attention on social media lately. In it, he argues for using the practice of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, which was invented in the Depression-era U.S. and perfected at Toyota in Japan. But instead of using it only to continuously improve our workplaces or our jobs, he suggests Kaizen as a powerful approach for improving ourselves.  Why is  Kaizen  so effective as a means of personal improvement? To answer that question, consider the people you know with big ambit...

  If you want to get a "yes" from a consumer, write down these strategies from top salespeople and entrepreneurs to win people over. The word "influencer" is used a lot in business, but how does the power of persuasion really work? An Ever reach study explains the elements that companies use to impact their customers to  get that "yes  ." For business, the principles of "reciprocity" and "scarcity" are big factors in the persuasion game. Customers are more inclined to appreciate your business, for example, when you give them something personalized or unexpected. It's that same vein, they tend to want the things that aren't everywhere, that's why limited-time offers tend to be a high selling point. Clients also like to feel  confident  . Your company can build a lasting relationship by emphasizing your "knowledge" and "authority" in your industry. Try to give your service a trial period, allowing your futu...

  Reading Time:   3   minutes Two years ago I worked with a team that struggled with delivering feedback to each other. Team members would try to express something to either raise each others performance levels or to improve working relationships, but somehow something would always seem to go wrong and they ended up triggering each other. This damaged their productivity and morale to an extent that several people left the team. The remaining team members went through feedback training and coaching, and we looked at how the intentions behind feedback are the foundation for constructing constructive feedback. For example, feedback about performance and feedback about working relationships sound very different but the members of this team always used the same format. Quite similar to when teams use user story formats for non-story related work e.g. As a system I want to not run out of memory so I don’t crash. After feedback training, this team was even able to have very diff...

  Career planning is one of the most underrated exercises. And maybe one of the biggest reasons why most professionals end up doing an ordinary comfortable job and not living up to their fullest potential. That is true that your career is not entirely in your hand as it gets affected by many external factors such as global economic situations, technological changes, family priorities etc. Still having a plan in hand can save you from many unexpected downturns. Many professionals shy away from career planning, as they think it will equip them with a rigid pathway, which they will not be able to follow but rest assured this is not the case. Career planning will give you a basic plan for your career trajectory. It will make you aware of your shortcomings, you will know what steps you need to take in order to overcome these shortcomings. You will become more conscious of your choices and priorities in life and this will further save you from getting stuck in a bad job or a ca...

  “How do I find time for my own personal development?” That was a question a client asked me recently and it sparked an interesting conversation. Do you find time or do you make time? Fed up by her company deciding on her next role, she wanted to take matters into her own hands. Her focus was her own career progression within the same organisation. She realised that there was no question about finding or making time. Making time was her only option if she wanted to determine her future herself. Michael Moran, the CEO/Founder of  10Eighty , once suggested that we’d plan our careers like our holidays. It’s only January and my team and I had probably 12 chats about the places we wanted to visit this year. There weren’t 12 conversations about how we’d like to develop ourselves career-wise in 1, 2 or 5 years. Do you have these in your team? Workforce planning is nowadays routine for most companies. It’s harder for you though to decide what job you’d like to have in 2, 5 or 10...