A Four-Question Business Plan to Jump-Start Your Inner Entrepreneur | Lifehacker Australia

A Four-Question Business Plan to Jump-Start Your Inner Entrepreneur | Lifehacker Australia: "
# What is your product or service?
# Who are your customers?
# When will things get done?
# When are bills due and when do you get paid?"

Seems like a very good way to outline a business plan....

LG Seizes Bikini Phone As Opportunity To Put Models in Bikinis - Gizmodo Australia

Um.. yes, what a great concept for naming conventions.. we all know sex sells, especially bikini clad Korean girls.

Pismo File Mount Creates Virtual Drives from ZIP, ISO Files | Lifehacker Australia

I often have to mount an ISO, or some such thing, things looks handy and convenient.

Top 10 Printable Paper Productivity Tools | Lifehacker Australia

If you like paper and books and magazines as much as I do, then anything that you can make yourself out of paper is an interesting topic.

See this link for some interesting thkings to do, i like the PDF to multi foldable booklets, and especially the wallet, must try that one... can you imagine, you could have a custome cover, give them as gifts, portables, for the kids for their weekly pocket money, kinda cool idea...

Telecommuting Job Categories

Note to self, if i need extra income, go look here, hopefully its all about jobs that can be done from home, and are not scams and work from home cons...

DisneyShopping.com: Pre-Order Ultimate WALL•E Remote-Control Robot

Ok, when i find one of these, might make a good present for someone i know...

DVD Catalyst Rips DVDs to Friendly Formats in One-Click | Lifehacker Australia

OK, i was looking for a new ripper the other day, i ended up with nothing, wish i had this...

Golden Shellback | Splash Proof Coatings

If this turns out to be true, it should be made standard to all devices, not sure about how hard wearing it is, but then again, if all the internal parts are coated, it shouldnt matter if the outer gets wet?

10 Fuel Efficiency Tips for Hypermilers – Ecomodding and Hypermiling - Popular Mechanics

Somethign to try for my car, im always interested in these things, especially if it saves me money.

How To Spray Paint Your PDA - Instructables - DIY, How To, tech

Ill give this a whirl on my DOPOD one day.. im bored with it...

CPUID

I think I need to run this and check out my system, or maybe in the future it will come in handy... also, i just had a thought that everyone else is probably already onto, but i think its about time i bought a USB stick, just for USB stick runnable apps. I have two now, maybe i dedicate one for apps, and one for er.. um.. data ;-)

7 Free Books That Should Be On Your Shelves - Stepcase Lifehack

Free books? my two favourite words, conveniently placed together, form... well, lets go have a look...

One Hundred Push Ups Takes You from Zero to a Hundred in Six Weeks | Lifehacker Australia

Ok, this one I can wait for the weekend to try, maybe by next friday i can do 1.

How to Lead Change in Your Organization

 

Change is the biggest constant in today’s business world. Even charities and educational organizations are finding that they need to constantly innovate not only to compete for donation dollars, clients, and members, but to remain relevant to the changing social landscape around them as well.

But people hate change. Right? The management literature is loaded with tales of corporate innovation gone awry – product launches flubbed, reorganizations that caused productivity to plummet and workers to flee en masses, hideously stupid morale programs that mandated chipperness and received resignations in return, and so on. When workers at any organization get together, they swap stories of corporate inanity, laughing at each other’s tales of programs too stupid to have been thought of in the first place, let alone implemented – yet they were.

No,the common wisdom goes, people don’t want change. They want the steady footing of corporate constancy.

Avast number of books have been written about how to resolve this problem: companies need change, but workers hate it. Graduate management programs dedicate countless semester-hours to coping with this conflict. Executives wring their hands over the tension between their needs and employees’ unwillingness.

All for nothing.

As Michael Kanazawa, author of Big Ideas to Big Results points out in the title of his new e-book at ChangeThis, people don’t hate change, they hate how you’re trying to change them.

People LOVE change

People don’t hate change, they love it. Workers constantly seek promotions and new job responsibilities. They buy self-help books and personal development books seeking to become better at their jobs. They launch their own businesses. They change companies and jobs, they even change careers, all for the sake of breaking out of unsatisfying routines and gaining control over the conditions of their own labor.

People love change, they just hate having change rammed down their throats. They hate being sold a bill of goods, and too many corporate innovations feel like a bill of goods to the workers expected to implement them.

Three principles for change people love

Kanazawa got his start as a corporate strategist at the same company where Scott Adams gave birth to Dilbert. I think it’s safe to say that Pacific Telesis was a company that got change wrong. Repeatedly. Much to our general amusement.

Frustrated by the ham-handed – and almost always unsuccessful — way that change was managed there, Kanazawa sought out a different way of approaching change. In People Don’t Hate Change, he lays out the three principles companies need to embrace to create real innovation that their employees will get behind:

Do more on less

Workers fear the latest new program to come across their desk because they’ve learned that change means more work – for them. These fears are confirmed when management invites them into the conference room or meeting hall for the inevitable “pep rally” and gushes about the new program – and then tells them that they must “do more with less”.

It appeals to our core values of thrift and efficiency, this idea of doing more with less. It sells us – a little. But in the end doing more with less is impractical. Employees end up overtaxed by new responsibilities, frustrated by lack of resources, and resentful about all the work they’re doing with no extra compensation.

Instead,Kanazawa suggests that management demonstrate clearly what the new priorities are, and what is no longer a priority. Give workers a clear sense of what they should be focusing on, and get rid of the rest. Outsource it, or better yet cut it entirely.

Doing more on less means doing more work, more thinking, and more activity on less stuff. It means focusing employees’ efforts where they count, instead of splitting their attention twenty different ways.

There’s no such thing as buy-in

Companies know the value of “buy-in” when pushing radical new programs. Buy-in is that sense among workers that they hold a stake in the success of a project, that it’s theirs, somehow – they’ve “bought into” the new program.

Typically,companies will assign a leadership team, outside consultants, or project group in a division to design a new program. Once the plan is finalized, they’ll go to the employees who will be responsible for implementing the new plan for a buy-in meeting. They “sell” the plan, and employees “buy in”.

Except,they don’t. They may think it’s a great idea, they may be enthusiastic about it, but in the end, it’s not their plan.

Kanazawa advocates a different approach to innovation – bring employees in from the start, rely on their practical experience and expertise and incorporate their ideas into the plan. Follow their lead.

When workers are instrumental in creating change in their organization,there is no need for buy-in because the ideas are already theirs.

Leadership is not about you

A year ago, I debuted at Lifehack with a post on leadership, saying that leadership wasn’tabout power, it was about empowering others. Kanazawa concurs, writing,“Leadership impact is not about how aggressive, decisive, and visionary you are, it is about how you bring that out in others.”

By empowering those around them to do more, true leaders drastically increase their own leadership power – their power scales with the ability of those around them.

It is important for leaders to have vision, authority, and ambition,but it is more important for them to reach out to others all along the chain of command to make sure that everyone feels involved in the process of change. Leaders who don’t do this, who attempt to impose their vision from the top-down, might manage to achieve something that lookslike their vision, but which is hollow and empty.

Make change lovable

I’ve had Kanazawa’s book in my “to read” pile for a while, and I’m anxious to make time to read it. In the meantime, though, People Don’t Hate Change, They Hate How You’re Trying to Change Them gives a good introduction to the approach to change that Kanazawa has developed since leaving Dilbert-land. Keeping Kanazawa’s principles in mind can help any organization to leverage the love that people already have for true, meaningful change – instead of working against that love and forcing their employees into a reactionary, self-defensive position.

And that dissolves entirely the tension between companies’ need for change and workers’ distrust of it. When you make change lovable, there’s no need for hand-wringing.

---

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV.His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

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NSFW Video: Topless Wii Fit Lets You Exercise In Front Of Your Computer

Oh Zoo, when can I watch this.... I am really into wii....

I Dose

Ohyeah!, let me get my headphones out of my bag and give this a whirl.. can it really be this easy? How about the dont feel hungry beat? thats gotta be useful, or maybe, the beer replacement beat, oh, they dont have it ? YAY! back to beer.

Create a Caricature

I could make a bunch of these, how interesting...

Dummies Book Cover Generator/Maker 2008

I will use this a little later on.. Got a few ideas I want to fake up.

Aussie House Sitters is a house sitting database site for Australian and New Zealand house sitters and for those who are needing a sitter

Ill have to show my mum this, its possibly going to help her out.

Home - Pencil Project

A drawing application in a web browser, what will they think of next, maybe a browser with an OS in it.

I had a quick look and like the idea of being able to make software mockups, cheaper than visio or visual studio.

MUTO is Among the More Astounding Videos We've Seen Online...or Off | Gizmodo Australia

This video gets a good write up, if I get a chance to watch it.

Research UAV is Preview of Hovering Spy Drones of Tomorrow | Gizmodo Australia

Im really into RC mini helicopters, i thought the potential was pretty good for these little critters. Then i saw this report, its not pretty, but it certainly is an interesting design, and the logics built in are pretty advanced as well, not need to fly it yourself.

I predict a few small crashes still though!

Great Giz Ideas: Harass Your Neighbours With Your Wi-Fi Hotspot Name | Gizmodo Australia

Interesting, i like the looks of some of these, never thought of it before, plus I never am very good at creative naking, especially PC's and Laptops etc...

iPhone 3G Launch Details: Get Those Sleeping Bags Ready | Gizmodo Australia

This story is wrong in oh so many ways, not the least the guy wearing a bra!

celtx - #1 choice for media pre-production.

Im not sure if I could use this, might be interesting for Col, who knows. For writing a book there may be some way to apply it.

But for setting up the pre-production as its designed to, then it certainly looks good. I spose some things you take from this is setting up scenes etc.

Building Outdoor Stairs

Stairs, they go up, they go down. But how to make one. Ive got a horrible set of front stairs to my house, they are too steep, are dangerous, and probably will collapse sometime. Ive been researching different types of stairs, both construction and style.

Ill read this site soon, lots of interesting stuff here by the looks.