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5 Successful Ways to Create Business Ideas

This article will help you understand how other successful business people came up with successful and profitable business ideas. To be successful you need to be keen, passionate and able to learn from your mistakes, Richard Branson once said that failing his first business is what made him successful.

Business Ideas

Business ideas are all around you, many inventors and business people originally came up with a product, service or idea due to their own need and then later turn this idea into a profitable business.  Business Start Up books are also a great way to gain some cheap expert advice.

  • The World Wide Web (WWW.) was originally created for scientist studying high energy physics around the world to share information more efficiently.

Many people see “something” is missing or notice how one product or service can be improved, turning this business idea into profit.

  • In 1907, while working in a department store as a janitor, James Spangler thought that his carpet sweeper caused his cough. He decided to improve that way he clean carpets and tinker with an old fan motor, broom handle, pillow case and soap box creating the first Hoover which he later patented in 1908.

Other successful business people sell other peoples products and make millions without having to spend money on materials, initially.

  • The Amazon affiliate programme made Amazon successful as well as many internet marketers, selling Amazon products on their website and on Google Ad-words.

Life Coaching can help you prepare yourself for self employment and achieving your business goals.

Do what you love to do


As with any job, career and business, you need to do what you love to do! By doing what you love, you will bring passion, creativity, knowledge and persistence to your business. Businesses don’t happen over night, they take time and hard work, if you do not love your business idea you will soon stop working towards it and in many cases this will cost you a lot of money.

Hobbies

One of ways to have a successful business is by creating a business from something you love to do. You can do this by looking at your hobbies. What are you really good at? DIY, creative Christmas card designs? Writing stories? Many successful business people often turn there hobby into a business, Peter Jones started a Tennis Coaching business from his passion of tennis.

Remember you may enjoy your hobby because it is a hobby, would you enjoy your hobby if you had deadlines to meet? Would you still be passionate about your hobby, if you had to work on your hobby everyday?

A good way to start a “Hobby” business is to keep your full time job and work on your business part time, this way you will know if your hobby is losing it’s passion.

Turning the Old into the New

New business ideas are often few and far between. Many businesses take one idea and improve it. Take the mobile phone, first this was a portable way of communicating with others. You can now read e-books, add events to your diary, take photos and videos the list go’s on and on.

A mechanic decided to take the garage to the customer, by using a transit van fitted with all the tools and equipment needed to fix cars and carry out MOT’s

Chefs do this all the time; they take an old recipe and add a new twist. Once they add a new name to the recipe they open doors and wit for the customers.

What idea can you improve? What product or service do you use that can be improved?

Offer a Service

A great way to make a successful business is to offer a service to your customers. More people prefer others to carry out everyday jobs and high profits can be made offering a service. Recently we have seen an increase in Hand Car washes, many started by offering a car wash for around £2-£3 and now many of these businesses have evolved into a valet service charging around £30-£40 a valet.

Franchises

If your business minded and know you can be successful and know your not type of person to come up with new ideas and new ways to better existing products, you can buy a franchise.

A franchise helps you build your own business with (in many cases) an already established brand. Don’t fall into the trap of “if I buy a franchise I will be successful”, the franchise is still a business that you need to manage and make profitable.

To minimise your risk understand what you will get for your money and like with any other business write a business plan that is realistic and achievable.

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Achieve Your Career Goal

This technique will help you achieve your goal, by breaking down your goal into realistic chunks. Also, by looking at the outcome of your goal and the resources you can access you will start to think about a future time when the outcome has been achieved and how this will make you feel and the changes this goal will bring. 

  

This is a great motivational tool used by many coaches. We have written this technique as a set of questions, you can print of the questions and answer them one by one. Clients who have used this technique feedback how effective a small number of questions can be. 

Good luck and enjoy achieving your career goal and outcome.                              

  

Setting Your Career Goal  

  

First think of your career goal as a positive and state the career goal in the present tense; as an example if your goal is to “get out of the company I hate” you can change this to a positive “To find a new job in a company that will help me develop” 

  

Record Your Positive Goal _______________________________________ 

  

Be In Charge of Your Goal  

You need to take responability of your career goal, it is good to use other resources like asking a friend to check if their company have any vacancies, but you are fully responsible for achieving your career goal – it is only you who can make this goal a reality. 

  • How will you start it?
  • How will you maintain it (the activity)?
  • If anything, how might you stop the good work?
  • What could you do instead to continue making good progress?

 

 A Career Coach can support you to achieve your career goal                                                      

Be Specific  

Your goal is the overview, now lets get specific. The smaller the details and information, the more achievible and real your goal becomes. As a motivational tool having smaller chunks of your goal recorded, makes it easier for you to move forward, by seeing yourself  each step along the way that you have achieved 

  • Where will you be when you start your goal?
  • When will you start working towards your goal?
  • How will you know you are moving forward?
  • What specifically will you be doing?
  • If you were doing this now, where are you? What can you see? What do you say to yourself? How do you keep going? How do you feel right now?
  • What would others say when they can see you achieving your goal? What will others see you doing?
Collect Evidence  

What is the outcome to achieving your goal? As we achieve the goals we set our-self we tend to find our lives move forward in more then just one way.

 

  • How will you know that the goal has been achieved?
  • What will be different? What will you see, hear and think when you have achieved your goal?
  • How will you know that your goal has lead to your desired outcome?

Resources  

Once you have a goal and desired outcome and you are motivated to achieve your goal and outcome, you may want to use some additional resources.
 

  • What resources do you have available that will help you to reach your goal?
  • Who do you know that may be able to help, support and encourage you?
  • What books, information, state of mind may help you achieve your outcome?
  • Who do you know that has achieved the same outcome?

Size Matters                                                                                                                 

Ask Yourself:

  • Is the outcome the right size?
  • Does the outcome seem realistic and achievable?
  • Does it represent enough of a challenge to keep you interested without it being so big that it feels overwhelming?
  • Does outcome look, sound, feel exciting enough to keep you motivated?
   

A Little Extra

 

  • What would be the consequence in your life and relationships if you got your outcome?
  • How do you feel when you have achieved your outcome?
  • Who else would the outcome effect?

   

   

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What Happened To All The Career Advisor Jobs?

As you will already be aware with the cut in public spending, large contract holders such as Connexions (the largest career advisor recruiter in the UK) have slowed down their recruitment policy.

 New All-Age Career Service                                                                                   

This has lead to high competition for career advisor jobs in both public and the private sector. With schools, colleges and universities able to fund their own career advisors and the new government announcing the new all-age career service jobs are still available even with the public spending cuts and I would add competition is high especially for newly qualified careers advisors.

 Competition for Jobs

Fierce competition means that you need to understand what career companies are looking for in terms of skills and knowledge and how you can evidence that you possess these on your CV and how you can back this up with stories during a careers job interview.

As a career advice company with a background in careers advice in both the private and public sector, employment king understand what employers are looking and how your Career Advisor CV will pass the application process.

For newly trained careers advisors, I would highly recommend practicing your skills as a volunteer, there are many volunteering opportunities throughout the UK.

Career advisor interviews are often long processes with questions directed on your skills and experiences and a second section on your values, beliefs and personality. As a career advisor you will already understand the importance of self development and how meeting a professional careers advisor to discuss interview techniques will give you the upper hand.

To be offered a career advisor job in these testing times, you need to understand the job role, the contract you are applying for (as these vary massively throughout the company) and the skills needed for the job role.

Once you understand the employers requirements you can evidence you have what they require on your CV, Application form and during the Job Interview.

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Internet Marketing – How to Get Customers to Your website

Do you have a website you need to promote; are you looking for more hits and more customers? To have a successful business you need to know how to market your website and to gain returning customers with a monetised website.

  • The more hits you get to your website, the more customers you will receive and the more money you will make.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

This article will teach you how to promote your website to gain new customers, with a monetised website the more customers that hit your website the more income you will receive.

Getting Hits to your website

To get traffic to your website you need your website to rank on page one or two on Google, any lower then this and your traffic will be low – no customers. People search on what we call “key words” such as life coaching in Manchester  (for a coaching website) you need your website to rank high on your search term to get any real amount of customers  to your website.

Google Ad-Words

The quickest way to gain instant clients is by paying for Google Ad – words, as your clients search for a Key wordthe adverts that are shown on the right hand side of page are paid advertisement and you only pay when a client clicks on your advert – and it’s up to you how much you pay, obviously the more you pay the higher up the page you go. The advantage here is that you rank on Google page one within minutes of setting up your ad-word account.

SEO

You can also get your website on Google page one or two for free, the way this works is once Google have a key word entered in their search engine, for this example we will use Business Coaching the adverts that come up naturally (not paid for with ad-words) are called SEO. This works by Google checking how many backlinks – people linking to your website from their website with the search term. The more backlinks you have directed to your website the higher up Google you climb.

The myth is that Google check your website content, which is true and I would add that backlinks make up 95% of the power to make your website rise up the Google pages.

  • Remember the higher up Google you rank the more clients will hit your website.                                                                                                                                      

Directories

Directories rank high in Google searches for a large amount of key words, you can pay for (in most cases) a yearly subscription for your website to be added to their directory. You can also add your website to free directories but these do not rank very high but do in most cases add a backlink to your website.

What next?

If you want hits to your website quickly use Google Ad-Words and Paid Directories, you pay out initially but gain clients normally on the same day.

Alternatively, market your website for free, add comments to blogs and free directories and build up your backlinks. Once your backlinks increase you will see your website climb higher in Google searches.

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Volunteering – The Best Job Searching Tool

We all know Volunteering is an advantage for anyone looking for a new job or career. From my own personal experience I enjoy volunteering as it gives you sense of satisfaction, accomplishment and for me a chance to give something back.

You can use volunteering to gain new experience and in some cases new qualifications, many professionals I have met have gained their career by starting as a volunteer.

CV

 

When recording volunteering on your CV, don’t, like many other job hunters, undersell your volunteering experience. Add your volunteering work under the Employment section and record it as you would with any past or current job position.

Interviews

 

A great opportunity to sell your volunteering experience is during the job interview. Most employers are impressed with a volunteer as it already proves you have dedication, your reliable and hard working – if you wasn’t you wouldn’t volunteer. Also employers will recognise that you have good time management skills and that you are able to take on new responsibility.

For your volunteering to gain a new job offer, you need discover the skills you have gain that are relevant to the position you are applying, even when apply for a job in a different sector. 

  • Project management – organizing events or fundraising activities  
  • Sales skills – contacting people face to face for donations or recruiting volunteers
  • Communication – explaining games and rules to groups of youths

Companies and employers value dedication and passion, as a volunteer you already have these qualities; you need to ensure they come across during the job interview as many good natured volunteers often undersell their skills.

Write down a list of all your skills and qualities you gain from volunteering

Volunteering Employment
  • Communication
  • ITC
  • Time Management
  • Organisation
  

Next read the job specification and if your skill or quality is needed, record an experience when you have used the particular skill as a volunteer in the second box; this is the starting point for answering your interview questions.

Many volunteers win awards, again the job interview is a time to sell yourself, don’t be shy mention anything that will help you gain a new job offer.

Being a volunteer is great for a number of reasons including meeting new people, new experiences and gaining new skills. As you have discovered volunteering can also help you find work, if you are not a volunteer start looking for a volunteering opportunity now.

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Enterprising Skills

In the recent government budget, we were told that small business will help get the UK out of the recession. The chancellor announced that there will a £45 billion increase in lending to small and medium size businesses, which could lead to 57,000 new jobs.

This is a great time for entrepreneurs with creative ideas and enterprising skills to enter their sector as self employed business person.

 

What are Enterprising Skills?

To be able to create and operate your own enterprise you will need the knowledge and ability to contribute to your enterprise or and employers enterprise.

Key Enterprising Skills Include:

  • Formulating business plans
  • Selling and marketing of products and services
  • Identifying and obtaining resources
  • Understanding your sector/marketplace needs and wants.
  • Creating and advancing new services and products for the marketplace

A great technique created by Walt Disney to help you create and advance new ideas is the Disney Model (an NLP Technique) The Disney Model allows you to use your creativity, while at the same time ensuring you don’t miss any pitfalls.

 

How to Plan Out Your Ideas  

 

This technique in NLP is called the Disney model, as Walt Disney used this model when creating and planning out his ideas for films and theme parks. It allows you look at your idea creatively (Dreamer) realistically (Realist) and critically (Critic)

This technique works really well if you do it physically by placing 3 A4 sheets, each one with a title written on each one; Dreamer, Realist and Critic and place these on the floor. Alternatively you can do this technique from your desk; again you will need the three labelled pieces of paper. 

Step One – finding your inner resources as a Dreamer, Realist and Critic.

 

Step on to each of the A4 sheets one at a time; when you step onto the Dreamer piece of paper, close your eyes and think of a time when you have been highly creative, this maybe recently or even far back as your school days. Relive the experience and notice what your creative side felt like, how it felt to work to no rules allowing your imagination to work in its own speed.

Shake off  – this helps you break state.

Next step onto the Realist sheet, think back to a time when you felt realistic about an idea, (if you can’t think of a specific time, imagine you are the type of person who can be highly realistic) re-live this experience as if you were that realistic person now, what makes you feel realistic, what do you say to yourself, how do you act and sound? Do you follow or devise a specific plan? What do you do when you feel realistic about an idea?

Shake off and break state

Finally step onto the Critic piece of paper, again close your eyes and remember back to a time when you were able to criticise an idea or project in a constructive way. Remember all the details of this past experience, how did you feel, how do you view ideas when your being positively critical? What do you say to yourself, how do you stand, what is different physically and mentally when you are being a critical person?

Step Two – Your Outcome

 

Think about your outcome, this could be a business idea, becoming a millionaire, creating the new Facebook – what is your outcome? Step onto the Dreamer piece of paper remembering all the emotions and energy from your re-lived experience.

Visualise yourself completing this outcome, imagine you’re a character in a film or a dream, anything can happen, let your imagination open up and see all the different and varied ways you can achieve your outcome. Feel yourself achieving your outcome.

Next step onto the Realist piece of paper, see yourself as all the other characters in the film or dream, look at your outcome from their eyes and their experiences. Follow this by looking at your process for achieving your outcome as a story board. How realistic is this idea?

Finally, step onto the third piece of paper, the Critic. Look at your outcome from a critic’s point of view, what is wrong? What doesn’t work? What would your inner critic say? Turn all your criticisms into questions for your dreamer.

Now you have used your creative dreamer side, checked how realistic this outcome is and have come up with several good critical questions. Step back onto the Dreamer sheet for your creative side to come up with solutions – walk through all three sheets and continue to use the cycle until you have an imaginative and realistic idea that will work, as you have been your own critic and found and solved any possible obstacles.

Summary

 

Some entrepreneurs have lots of creative skills, others are realistic while some can be critical – all these personalities have positives from a business sense, the Disney Model helps you to access each one of these characteristics for your business model to ensure your projects have been observed at all angles.

The technique allows you to access your Dreamer, Realistic and Critic state to be used to look at project overviews and individual details. If you are new to NLP this technique once read may seem a little strange (standing on A4 pieces of paper) and I would add once done, many entrepreneurs and business people feel the benefit of having the opportunity to look at all the angles of their business idea.

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UK Highest Paying Jobs

What would change in your life if you gain a high paying job? What would be the outcome of having a large income? Many people answer these questions with; security, a big house, a positive career, respect, a nice car, going on several holidays a year or to get away from poverty, to stop living in a bad neighbourhood, to get away from having no money or no future.

Whatever your desired outcome is, you can achieve it by following these two steps:

Achieving Your Outcome

Number One: write an action plan with all the steps needed to reach your career goal and outcomes, a career coach can help you complete your action plan. An action plan works as you are making a commitment on paper, research has shown that you are more likely to achieve goals which you have written down.

Number Two: think about the first two questions about your outcomes, the reason you want a high paid job; collect pictures of all the things you want; car, house, security, etc and put them on a board (in coaching we call this an image board) and place the board somewhere visible and some place you are likely to look each day. By seeing the images – your desired outcomes on a daily basis, will keep you motivated and focused.

High Paying UK Jobs

 

Below is a list of UK high paying jobs, under salary brackets. In any position you love and enjoy you will find you will automatically move up the career ladder, as people always put extra effort in to something they like and in most careers you can move up to a comfortable salary.

Having money is always a bonus and I would add your career goal should be based on your values and beliefs rather then just money. If you had the choice between a well paid job you did not enjoy or an average paid job you loved, which one would you choose?  

Career Coaching

 

If you have a dream of being successful and are currently unsure which career or job sector you should invest time in, you would benefit from a few career coaching sessions. In brief a career coach can support you into your career by matching your skills, qualities, personality, values and beliefs against a job specification. In short you can gain a job you will love and gain promotions in, gaining all the financial benefits to come with each new step up the career ladder.

UK Job Salary                                                                                                            

 

£40,000 and Above

  • Barrister
  • Dentist
  • Doctor
  • Financial controller       
  • GP        
  • Lawyer
  • Pilot    
  • Solicitor               
  • Teacher 

Between £30,000-£40,000

  • Accountant
  • Analyst
  • Architect
  • Business Analyst    
  • Developer   
  • Engineer    
  • Lecturer         
  • Pharmacist
  • Quantity surveyor 
  • Software developer 
  • Software Engineer                                         

Between £25,000-£30,000

  • Careers advisor                                         
  • Design engineer      
  • Designer       
  • Electrician         
  • Graduate    
  • Graphic designer              
  • HR  
  • Nurse  
  • Personal Assistant   Researcher
  • Sales Executive
  • Technician                                                          
  • Wed Designer                                                    

Below £25,000

  • Administrator
  • Car/Van delivery driver                         
  • Receptionist
  • Recruitment
  • Sales assistant                                                 
  • Secretary
  • Teaching assistant                                        

 

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How to get anyone to like you – Rapport Building Skills

Knowing how to gain instant rapport is a great skill to possess and an easy skill to learn, you can already think of a thousand situations when getting anyone to like you instantly would be useful.

Today, after reading this article you will have a better understanding of how to create rapport with a Stranger or Interviewer instantly and how to use this to your advantage.

Rapport

 

 

Rapport creates trust, helping us achieve our goal; getting a discount in a shop to passing a job interview. In NLP Rapport is defined as the establishment of trust, harmony and co-operation in a relationship.

Have you ever walked in to a room and you are instantly drawn to one group of people rather then another? This is because we like people who are similar to us.  

This can be conscious; you may go over to someone who is wearing a football shirt from the team you support or carrying a book from your favourite author. Similarity helps us break the ice and build rapport.

With your unconscious mind, you may be drawn to a group of people or an individual, without knowing why. This could be due to person(s) posture, body language and even the way they speak or dress.

When in rapport your conversation will feel “in the flow” or as Robert Dilts once said “a loop of mutual influence”

Building Rapport

 

We like people who seem familiar to us, who appear as we do. One way to increase rapport is to Match the other persons Posture.

While in conversation, match how the other person stands (creating a mirror effect) and copy their common gestures. Some NLP-ers will say Matching is a sign of rapport which is true and I would add to improve rapport matching body language and posture works really well.

 An Interview Coach can teach you how to build rapport with interviewers

Second listen to the person’s language and match their voice speed and tone – you can even match and build rapport over the phone.

Also, listen to the words the person uses, do they use Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic language? You can use a person’s language to gain rapport and influence them.

The Power of a Smile.

 

If you entered a room with two people stood in it and you had to choice one person to talk to, they both looked the same and had a similar posture, the only difference was one was smiling – who would you prefer to talk to?

Everyone is attracted more to someone who smiles, as a smile shows warmth, confidence, happiness and acceptance. During an interview where we all know first impressions count, if you walk into the room confidently with a big wide smile you will instantly be liked.

Listen.

 

There is a lot more to learn on rapport building to get people to like you and for you to be able to influence others, far too much for one article. So we will return to this again as the next rapport building article will hold some powerful secrets.

But before you go, I will teach you one last tactic – Listening. We have all hear the old saying “we have two ears and one mouth, we should listen twice as much as we talk” this is very true.

Start a conversation by asking a question, as the other person talks keep listening and nod throughout the conversation. This will increase Rapport especially when you match their body language.

Listening builds rapport, by listening instead of interrupting with your own thoughts; it shows the other person the conversation is about them not you.

Future Pace.

You can even take this one step further; after listening to the other person build up and expand on what they have said, showing you have further knowledge and expertise. If possible add an idea/suggestion they have not thought of.

This technique, when learnt can be used to influence others, you can already think of ways this technique can improve your interview techniques.

As an example, many interviewers will tell you about a new contract they have won (the reason they are recruiting – as an example building FLT engines), as you sit their, smile, nod and listen-building up rapport. As the interviewer finishes, tell them how great it is to win a contract in these competitive times, and how (add in a further knowledge) the company could also use the engineers to delivery on site maintenance and breakdown repairs, as this would not increase overheads and pays well.

It doesn’t matter if the company will take on this idea, it shows you have knowledge in their sector and can think out of the box, plus your first goal was to establish excellent rapport which you have easily done, now all you have to do is answer the other interview questions positively and wait for your job offer.
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Motivating Your Team with The GROW Model

Having the skills to motivate your team is not as easy as many new mangers think it will be. Do you find that you can easily motivate some employees and not others, even when you are using the same approach? Why is that? Because we all have different personality types and while two people’s personalities may work well together, other personalities will not, it often down to how the individual filters the information you give them.

If you had a motivational tool that worked with all staff members, how would you implement this technique in your place of work? Today’s article will teach you how to use the GROW model (a coaching technique) to motivate your team.

GROW – Goal, Reality, Options and Will

The GROW model is a set of coaching questions to help your team achieve their goals, by asking a set of questions to move your teams thinking into a positive direction you can start to motivate your team and improve their performance.

First, you need to agree a Goal and Outcome with your team. What is your team goal? You can ask this question to your team; make the goal specific, measurable and realistic. You have to believe in your goal if you want your employees to believe in it, also be consistent don’t have a goal that conflicts with another company goal or you will lose motivation in an instant. 

Under each GROW heading you will find an explanation for the section and a list of potential questions you can use/ask to help your team achieve their goals. Each question is designed to move your employee’s way of thinking to a solution focus outcome.

Questions can be asked to a team or on an individual basis. You do not need to use all questions, rather use the questions as a reference or pick and choice questions that suit your goal or job sector.  

Goal Questions:

The Goal – what do I/We want to achieve? Keep this as simple as possible! The goal questions will support your team to understand the goal and when it will be achieved.  

  • What is the aim of this discussion?
  • What is the long term goal?
  • What is the short term goal?
  • Who is it for? Who are your end customers?
  • What do they really want? What is the benefit for your customers and you? What would make your customers/managers happy?
  • What do you need to deliver so your customer/line managers get what they want?
  • How long might it take to deliver? Is this feasible?
  • What would you consider as a milestone?
  • If everything went as well as possible, what would be the best possible outcome?
  • What does success look like to you?
  • How will you know that you have achieved your goal?
  • What is your budget? Is this feasible?
  • What will you look for when you deliver it? What would make the team unhappy? What would motivate them?
  • How will you measure your goal?
  • How can your passed experience help you achieve this goal?
  • What can you personally do to achieve your goal?
  • How much control does each of the team members have over the goal?

 

Reality Questions:

 

To achieve your goal you need to understand the Reality of your team’s current situation, skills, time constraints, attitudes, process and how far or near you are to achieving your goal.

  • What is happening now? – Who, what, where, how and when?
  • What is the effect or result of that?
  • How busy are you?
  • When things aren’t going well, who else can be brought in?
  • What is the current situation like?
  • Who is involved? What are they like? What can they add?
  • What’s working and not working?
  • Do you have enough time to achieve your gaol?
  • What is missing?
  • What is holding you back?
  • What can get you started?
  • What keeps you awake at night?
  • How easy is it to get things done?
  • How often have you tried?
  • Who is involved?
  • What is your part in the team?
  • What has already been started?

 

Option Questions:

First look at the overall big picture and the break this down in to smaller details, in NLP we call this chunking down. Remember that all your team members are all different and have different experiences and knowledge, this experience and knowledge will open new possibilities and options.

  • What are the two main options?
  • What else could you do?
  • What other options do you have?
    What if all constraints were removed?
  • What are the benefits and negatives of each option?
  • What factors will you use to weigh up the options?
  • If you had more time, what would you do?
  • If money was not an issue, what resources would you have?
  • If you had complete power what would you try?
  • How could you go about doing this?
  • How else could you go about doing it?
  • What could go wrong with that approach?
  • What would work well?
  • How long would it take to achieve each option?
  • What resource and expenditure would be needed?
  • What are the risks in each option?
  • What criteria will you use to select the main option?
  • What should you do first, next, last?
  • What are the cost and benefits of each of these ideas?
  • If you had more confidence, what would you try?
  • What could you sue as a back up plan?

 

Will Questions:

Once the team understands and believes in the goal and can see that this goal is achievable and realistic, they will have chosen their options and in most cases made a backup plan, your team will be ready to start moving towards their goal. The Will questions are designed to get the team thinking about starting their task.

  • So what will you do now?
  • What options will you choice?
  • To what extent does this meet all of your objectives?
  • What will you start first?
  • When will start (each step)?
  • What could stop you moving forward?
  • And how will you overcome it?
  • Will this address your goal?
  • How likely is this option to succeed?
  • What else will you do?
  • When will you know you are ready for this? How does it light your fire?
  • What will light your fire?
  • Is there anything stopping you from committing whole-heartedly to this?
  • Who else needs to buy in to it?
  • Who needs to know about the goal or action plan?
  • What needs to happen to make people enthusiastic?
  • What rewards for completion would help?
  • What additional help do you need?
  • What could I do to support you?
  • What can get you real excited about starting this project?
  • Is there anything thing else you need to before we start?

 

From a mangers point of view, you will agree that a list of questions does not always create the desired outcome, plan your questions in-advance and add them in the form of a discussion. You would have already noticed that none of the questions can be answered with a “yes” or “no” answer, the question are designed to form a discussion with your team.

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Future Jobs

The world changes at an ever increasing fast pace which means Technologies, Industries and Jobs are changing just as quickly.

This article will help you understand what pushes these changes and how they can affect your career choice and the future of UK jobs.

Why should you look at the Future of Jobs? Just imagine as a teenager you decide you want X career, you spend all of high school and college studying for exams that you pass with flying colours, you attend university to specialise in your career. Several years later, you leave university with your industry qualification only to find the job you have studied so hard for, no longer exist.

Technology Changes Jobs

Let’s take a simple example, in the 1940’s-1950’s thousands of women were employed to copy type, using a type writer. These jobs are now redundant as one person can now write a letter on a computer and have the computer personalise it for thousands of customers, many companies go one step further and use an automatic e-mail systems.

More recently you can see how new technology is changing industries and jobs; in most supermarkets you will now find a Self-Service Checkout, where one employee monitors on average 8 self service tills, compared to 8 workers working on 8 tills. It won’t be long until the percentages of checkouts are self service tills, leading to a loss of supermarket cashier jobs.

 

What Drives the Changes?

When you understand the Drivers you can often predict the future of jobs. There 5 main factors that drive industry changes.

  • Environment
  • Cost
  • Speed
  • Safety
  • Reliability

Using a simple example, to help reduce the destruction of forests and improve the environment companies may send out fewer letters by post. To save cost on stamps a business might use e-mails as a preferred method of communication. E-mails also help to increase speed, compared to hand delivered mail.  There is a reduction in safety risk using e-mails compared to hand delivered mail and  e-mails are less likely to be stolen or lost (even thought this can happen with e-mails) meaning they are more reliable then hand delivered mail.

The example above was written to give you an idea of what can push a change, but if a large amount of organisations reduce the amount of hand delivered mail they send out, this could lead to a loss in postal worker jobs. At the same time this could increase the amount of ITC jobs, Internet fraud protection jobs and Internet marketing jobs. What changes are being made in your workplace, job sector or location that will decrease current jobs or bring in new job sectors?

Future Jobs

We are already aware that the UK will see a reduction in low skilled jobs and an increase in highly skilled jobs (the government are looking to have a work force at a minimum of a Level 3 – equivalent to A-Levels, workforce) in the near future, in many sectors that change has already started to take place.

Below is a taster list of possible future UK jobs, you need to see which career would suit you? A careers advisor can help you pick a career that will match your personality, identity and beliefs.

Medical Robots – really? Yes hospitals have already started to use medical robots to help with technical operations.

Organ Designer – designing and growing organs for made to measure for human and animal implants.

Mind Capacity Doctors – we are now trying to understand how the brain works, how to access and store large amounts of different information and research is being undertaken in the study of excellence. There will also be a need for stress release doctors.

We will also still need Doctors, Dentist and Nurses.

Space Tour Guides and Space Travel Agents – many countries are investing in space, using satellites to improve communication and media; imagine in the future, as the fire service receiving a 999 call, the operator will be able to check by satellite if the call is real or not. The next step in the space sector may be space as a holiday destination.

Energy Researcher – with the green policy, scientist are always looking for new renewable energy, we have already heard of vehicles being run of potatoes, there will be high amounts of investment into energy research.

Skilled Manufacturing – with an increase in space activity, manufactures will be making, testing and producing space goods, space food and space equipment.

High Raised Farming – with a growing population, farming could be on the change with high rise farming, similar to a block of flats but with food sources growing on each level.

We have already seen farms, where cows can milk themselves by standing on a computerised milking machine.

Internet Marketing– with the I-Pad and Internet phones, we can already see the increase in Internet marketing and the selling of the Internet goods such as e-books.  There are many young millionaires who have stared a successful business from their bedroom.

Green Auditors – auditors to check how green a company is, giving advice on becoming greener. On a bigger scale, greener homes using renewable energy, cities with green areas, reducing city pollution and having urban farms. 

Wind Turbine Engineers – as you travel to the country or out to sea, you will often see wind turbines, the amount of turbines you will see are set to increase and this will bring new engineering and maintenance jobs.

Cyber Security– with increasing Internet companies, Internet marketing and Internet banking, we are all aware of the Internet pirates. The cyber security team will help you lower Internet risk.

Designers and Inventors– with new technologies, Internet phones, green cars, new energy, there has always been and will be in the future a need for inventors and designers throughout all business sectors.

  • What jobs do you predict will be available in 5, 10 or 15 years?

 

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