Be Successful Here

Balancing family and work can be a big challenge. It’s easy to get wrapped-up in the daily grind of work and begin to neglect what’s most important to us. This causes personal unhappiness and it also has a negative effective on the family.

Societal and cultural factors contribute to the difficulty many of us have trying to balance family and work. American culture puts a higher value on work than many other cultures. This is not to say, of course, that other cultures don’t work hard. Indeed, they do. But most do not place such an importance on the amount of time working. There is an implicit (and often explicit) understanding in American culture that people who work longer hours are more dedicated to the job and thus more valuable employees.

But what about dedication to one’s family? If asked whether we would like to dedicate more time to work or to family, we would probably unanimously answer “family.” Unfortunately, our words don’t always match our actions. If we truly want to balance family and work, we have to make family a priority and take the necessary steps to change the way we spend our time. Work and family don’t balance automatically. Achieving a balance takes “work” and is an ongoing process.

Let’s look at some of the commitments you can make to achieve a family and work balance:

• Set goals: Setting goals enables you to be crystal clear about what’s most important to you. Once you are clear about your personal and professional goals, communicate them to your family. Then ask what is most important to them so you can know what makes them feel valued. Make sure every family member has an opportunity to realize their goals as well.

• Take care of yourself: Make a commitment to exercise for at least thirty minutes every day. Regular exercise boosts energy levels and relieves stress, and improves both physical and mental health. Exercise can actually help you be a better mom or dad because you will have extra energy on the weekends to fully participate in family activities.

Traffic cones/road cones or bollards were invented in 1914 by Charles P Rudebaker. Although originally made from concrete with the intention of being permanent or semi permanent installations, today’s modern Cones are made from Thermoplastics or High grade rubber compounds. Typically speaking, for durability and extensive use on busy roads and motorways, most cones are made from a two-part design with a very tough rubber composite base top. Cones can also be molded complete with hand grips to increase easy handling due to weight around 7kg which increases sturdiness.

Many traffic/road cones are made from recycled PVC plastics stripped from discarded plastic bottles.

Traffic cones are not always conical and depending on the desired use can be employed in various situations indoors and out.

Applications

The most typical applications for cones or bollards are road management, redirecting vehicles or warning oncoming traffic of dangerous conditions ahead. Cones are used to redirect contra flow traffic on motorways or duel carriage-ways many metres even kilometres prior to any hazard or work area. The purpose of traffic cones is to give advanced warning to drivers but also allow a subtle gradual change in the flow of the oncoming vehicles. Advanced warning provides a safety buffer for the workers or users cones which is paramount with fast-moving traffic and allows rapid evasion if the line of cones are breached. In the UK when major transportation work is ongoing the traffic cone line if you will can reach multiple miles. An example of this; in 2011 the M1 UK motorway improvement scheme between Junction 10 and Junction 13 has incorporated lane reorganization and hard shoulder use while work is ongoing. The system requires 15 miles of road cone configuration. Roughly speaking that is over 48,000 cones used in that specific traffic management system.

Cones or bollards can also be used to block of an area for specific reasons or unspecified reasons by the authorities the result is the same, an overt sign; “warning do not enter” without having a specific road sign made.

For night-time use most cones are or should be equipped with a retro-reflective sleeve that can be one solid colour, red for example or have a silver/white phosphorous band which slips snuggly over the cone. These are seen typically on many UK streets and have become a favorite for students to “liberate” and place in unique locations.

ecently, a friend told me he could not attend a professional meeting relevant to his job because of an across the board travel ban. Whenever I hear of a company mandating across the board cuts in travel or any other specific item on their financial statement, I know that the company has no clue about what really goes on in its operations. Some companies seem to enact the same ban every year just after their second quarter results are known. After observing this, employees schedule their travel during the first half before the anticipated ban.

If travel is required to do necessary work, then not traveling will degrade the quality of the result. If not required for the work, then don’t send the employee on the trip. If the work is not necessary, then not doing it will save the travel expense as well as payroll expense and a host of other expense items. Typically, the costs to perform an activity come from a wide variety of financial accounts not just travel expense.

So the key to effective cost management is to focus on the activities needed to accomplish the results desired-and not on individual expense accounts. Of course, judgments and tradeoffs are required. However, these decisions are best made with a focus on the work or activity. Only at this level can appropriate decisions be made weighing the resources necessary to do the work well versus the cost to do the work.

The only caveat to this activity focus is to keep the business process they belong to in mind also. Keeping the process in mind will avoid optimizing one activity to the detriment of subsequent dependent activities.

The first step is to identify actual activities using Activity-Based Cost methodologies. Then the next step is to ask a series of questions:

1. Why do we do this work? If there is no good answer, stop doing the activity. No more questions are necessary. However, often it is necessary to keep asking why to cut through to the core reasons for the work. One rule of thumb is to ask “Why” five times.

The next questions assume the work is necessary.

1. Why does the activity cost as much as it does? With this question, we’re exploring the cost efficiency. Typically, we want to drive the cost per output lower, assuming all other factors are equal.

The question is one which everyone is attempting to find an answer to; how can you grow a business in an economic downturn when many companies are merely struggling to keep the doors open?

Some companies attempt to wait out the downturn and do nothing, but the proactive business owner knows that every attempt should be made to increase sales even with a smaller market share.

Here are a few pointers on growing your business in hard times.

Find Your Direction

The housing industry suffers during a flat economy because people can’t afford to build. Construction companies that make it through the slow times have to diversify and find the building markets that can still provide some work. Other businesses are no different.

If your target market has evaporated, consider changing direction to something that is viable. If it is possible to divide resources to focus on several different potential fronts, find what related fields you might be able to pursue based on competition and market demand.

Increase Opportunity with More Contacts

Some business owners don’t realize that they must work harder during the times when business is slow than they do when times are good. When there is plenty of work on the books, establishing new contacts and clients takes a back seat to production.

When business slows, it is time to invest longer hours beating the streets for new prospects. Increasing visibility by advertising and promoting a more prominent online presence is all part of bringing in more potential customers.

Decrease Overall Costs

If your company is hurting financially, you can well imagine that others in your industry are, too. Some of those companies are suppliers of the raw materials you need to conduct business. During a downturn is the best time to negotiate prices and look for special deals.

If you can lower your production costs, it may be possible to lower your price to clients, making your brand more competitive and attractive in the marketplace. This should help your sales and be reflected in company growth.

When you begin to trim fat, you should look closely at your books to determine where every dollar is going. It may be possible to change up services you receive from attorneys, accountants, insurance providers, and others. Many overhead costs need to be shopped on a regular basis anyway, in both good and bad times.