Functional Business JargonInsight and understanding into your working environment allows you to ask relevant questions, participate in wider circles, and subsequently earn more.
When watching a sport you know nothing about, you will sit there quiet and bored. That is until you ask about the rules and the players. Then it becomes interesting and you can join in the conversation. When growing your understanding of your business, it not only enables you to join in conversation, but also grow your career and your life's earnings! Table of Content:
What does being "business literate" mean?It is the ability to assess your contribution to your company, at the level that you are at. In other words, to know what effect your job has on the overall production of the company, and how to increase your contribution. Knowing these things and maximising your contribution, at whichever level, will make you an asset to the company and will permit you to grow your income through promotion and increase in responsibility. The business literacy proficiency will introduce you to business concepts that might seem a bit complex at first. But, remember to use dictionary.com and Wikipedia.org to clarify and verify unknown words and concepts.
As a starting point, we can pay some attention to Holden's four-stage model. This model applies to any job where client interaction occurs. This could include being a supplier, people in different departments/business unit including administrative personnel. The focus of the model is to increase the value you contribute to the people around you. The focus is on four different stages of proficiency and the exploration of the impact of various factors on how people operate in each stage.
Refer to the table below:
Applying the above principles to any job will make it clear why some people grow and get promoted and others do not. Growing your focus and customer relationship depends on how much effort you put into growing the other associated competencies and knowledge. Knowledge is the only dividing factor between those who excel and those who stagnate in jobs. EVA (Economic Value add and Profit)We would like to repeat that this section might be tough for most readers, we recommend that you work through it and ask people around you for help and use on-line tools like Wikipedia to research the topic and concepts thoroughly if you wish to become part of any business.
We widely refer to Economic Value Add or EVA for short as the most effective way of measuring business success. EVA is the final measure of business value. It is what investors will pay for the business. The market usually looks at two aspects:
The market's expectations of the company's ability to sustain, repeat and grow the profit stream.
Personal EVA is similar in that it is measured in terms of what you are worth to the company, your actual results and your economic value added to the business. Here you create space for sustainable personal income.
This means that your contribution however small had a direct impact on the company's overall value and profit. This means that if your contribution does not increase the value to the customer or business you are involved in, then why should they continue to employ you? This applies to everyone, from the cleaning staff to the CEO of the company.
To increase your individual EVA in order to grow the EVA of the company you need to improve factors that the value the customer gets from the company. An example of these is being an effective receptionist saves the client time and the time of your employer, directly saving them money and time that could be spent elsewhere rather than spending it waiting or trying to understand you. The other factor is to increase the customers value to the company (E.g. increasing the your sales by effectively assessing the client's needs enabling your company to provide more services or products and thus generate more profit)
Read more: A tutorial to help you understand EVA: http://www.investopedia.com/university/EVA/ Asking and gaining more information = personal and financial growth!It should now be clear to you why your employer would want you to become a more effective and growing employee! All you need to do is to show your interest and to ask questions about functions and happenings that you do not understand. Why are your current clients important, how can you contribute to the level of service, what are the opportunities for promotion in your current job?
By taking charge of your career and becoming business literate, you can decide on which level of the business you would like to function. Some would need to work harder and learn more than others but the beauty of the situation are that all the information you will ever need is freely available.
You will also notice that you will need to grow your other competencies along with your business literacy in order to communicate effectively and understand the numerical concepts and applications. Again, you can equip yourself with all of these competencies by yourself or within groups free! Take note of the additional information below and seehttp://www.careerdevelopmentplan.net/WT_Chapter9_a_Company_Growth_Sharing.htmlfor more information and detailed explanations. Project management as a tool for business understanding and successThe goal of any project within a company is a successful outcom. The trick lies in how to increase the odds that you will have a successful outcome! Any business initiative requires focussed effort through planning and execution. A way to describe that focussed effort is project management. Project management can be applied in virtually any task from financing to software development and product development and roll out. Remember the focus is on a successful outcome!
Understanding project management will enable you to do your job better and contribute more to the team you are working in.
The objectives of such information are so that everyone in the team can understand the ability of the product and the ability it has to satisfy customer needs. Everyone better understands his or her function and role. This is worth a lot, especially if you ever find yourself in a managerial role.
Managing the project enables you to manage :
Project management is thus more than just a possible career. It is a means to unite a team working towards a common goal. If you apply the principles like task clarification, you can do your job to the best of your ability, gain visibility and work as self-driven and informed employee.
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Listening and speaking abilityBeing able to pronounce words correctly is also of supreme importance. Many of us think we pronounce words correctly but in fact, we don't. We thus recommend a site that teaches you the sounds of English through activities and exercises that you can use in groups to check and practice pronunciation. It is a common problem among native Afrikaans and African language speakers that first language speakers often struggle to understand them and that they even ridicule people who struggle with pronunciation!
Free Self Assessment TestsIndustry Specific EnglishOnce you have identified your desired industry and career, it is also incredibly important that you familiarize yourself with business English and industry jargon. This can be done by searching for white papers and ezines concerning your industry and career, or by using BBC's Business English section.
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Writing and TypingImprove your grammar and vocabulary as well by going to BBC's Grammar and Vocabulary section. Note on the left hand side the specific areas of vocabulary like news, business, sport etc. This is especially important for people who write reports, speeches or produce any other type of document or presentation. Let the language that you use project the level of your trait and attitude.
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Tools to help these four categories
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