How To Effectively Use Those End of Year Quiet Times To Get Ahead

Jessica Kiely – The FRANK Team

When all of the Christmas parties are almost over for the year all most people can think about is going to the beach, Christmas Shopping and what they’re doing for New Years. But you are still “open for business”. How can you and your team effectively use that quieter end of year and early New Year time to get ahead and set yourself up for stellar results in 2009?

Here are some FRANK ideas for you and your team:

v The quiet time is the perfect time to reflect on the performance of your team and see how 2009 can be even better. Creating an open and fun environment to cover areas like highlighting successes & challenges experienced in the year, identifying areas for improvement and brainstorming solutions. And then most important, creating an action plan for implementing solutions to create an even better 2009. All of this needs to be done in a fun and open environment where everyone contributes.

In the “festive spirit” we have a great bonus for you today. We have a created a Day Outline for your End Of Year Team Performance Reflection, or what we call Re-Fresh that follows The Frank Team’s SCITSA formula. You can use this template to run your own Re-Fresh Day.

To get your FREE Re-Fresh Workshop Template email us at jessica@frankteam.com.au

v Schedule some team building activities. These don’t need to break the budget either. You can organise and run some simple and fun activities yourself. Or even better - get each person on your team to come up with their team building activity that they run with everyone, so you get all different flavours of activities. A quick web search gives you a huge list of Do-It-Yourself activities http://wilderdom.com/games/InitiativeGames.html and http://www.teampedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page You could try a Mini Olympics, Cooking or Art. It can be team building just coming up with the team building activities!

v Have a spring clean in your office environment. Identify as a team what needs some “work” and then schedule in blocks of time to get it done, doing it in blocks of time. Your work environment will feel lighter, more organised and ready for a brand spanking New Year. And if effective spring cleaning is what you are after then check out http://directory.homestead.com/article/spring-clean-up-of-your-office ! And to make it fun, turn it into a competition. As a team create the Spring-Clean-O-Meter that is a rating system. Give everyone a time period and then go around and rate each area using your Spring-Clean-O-Meter. Give away a cool prize to the best spring cleaner!

v Identify skills gaps in your team and find opportunities to fill those through some skills training. Perhaps your team needs better sales, technology or finance skills to produce even better results in 2009. As a team, identify those areas and see who would like or benefit from training in what. Give each person a budget and then they need to research and find the best option for their needs and budget. Then to ensure the learning is widespread, once the training has been undertaken each of those people gives a short presentation to everyone else, helping them to learn the skills they have just learnt. See below for the skills training that The FRANK Team can help you with.

v Spend time on Career Progression Planning for individuals in your team. We often don’t take the time, because we don’t have the time, to do a check in on how we are progressing in our career and where we would like to go. Similar to how businesses do their end of year review, giving staff the same time to review their careers is really beneficial to help staff re-focus and feel valued for your investment in them. It can really be as simple as where are you now, where would you like to be, what do you need to do to get there to then create a Career Profession Plan from.

If running this yourself totally freaks you out then see below how The FRANK Team can come in and run a fun, interactive and cost effective session for you, cos we love doing this stuff!

Even if you do this regularly with your staff, and have a structured program for it, the end of year is still a great time to do this, as a period of time is coming to an end and this is a natural time to reflect and reassess goals and priorities for the coming year.

The Frank Team can help you with:

v Career Progression Plan workshops

v Team Building activities that are run in-house

v Facilitating your Re-Fresh End of Year Team Performance Reflection Day

Ask us how: Jessica@frankteam.com.au Ph: (02) 99664333

All of our sessions are fun, engaging & cost effective. For session information you can visit us at http://www.frankteam.com.au/corporates/ .

Just what is a "young entrepreneur"?

Did you know there are over 50,000 young Australians under the age of 25 running their own business? Yep, that’s right. Even 15 year olds are starting their own businesses; cool hey?!

You may know one of them, or perhaps some of the young people you work with have that entrepreneurial spark in them, or perhaps you have thought of Being the Boss yourself!

I was at a networking event recently, and whilst chatting to someone about the work that The FRANK Team does with young entrepreneurs, I was asked ‘What exactly is a young entrepreneur?’ The many ways in which we classify a ‘young entrepreneur’ immediately sprang to mind – age, mindset, action, personality, experience. So I thought I’d sit down and really think about what it is to be a young entrepreneur. It reminded me of the time when I first started my business at 19, all eager and full of ideas!

And then this fab email came through....

Hi Frank Team!

I receive all of your newsletters including Ignite, and I just wanted to drop by a real positive comment and tell you how much it has helped and influenced me!

Because of the thought-provoking and inspiring nature of the magazine, I began my own business about 7 months ago at the age of 16! I'm an hsc student now, managing my own local dance school called "Inspire". I aim to provide a safe, fun and non-competitive environment where children can freely express themselves without being exposed to inappropriate choices of music and ways of moving. My passion and love for dance as an art form is now being passed on, and I just want to thank you for the inspiration, encouragement and guidance that I find in your newsletters!

So here is just to encourage and to thank the Frank Team!

Regards

,Jemma Nicoll

Awesome stuff Jemma!

So who are these ‘young entrepreneurs’ apart from Jemma and myself? You can learn more about what it is to be a ‘young entrepreneur” right here http://www.frankteam.com.au/bizarticles/calling-all-young-entrepreneurs.aspx . I have put together a great article packed with ideas and tips on spotting enterprising youngsters, plus your very own Young Entrepreneur SnapShot audit to test if have some of the critical entrepreneurial attributes.

So what can you do to help your young people learn more about starting their own business?

The Frank Team would love to come to you and present one of our inspiring Youth Biz workshops for you and your young people. We really believe that starting a business as a young person is a viable career option and more young people should be exposed to it, just like Jemma. Why? It’s totally possible, you are in control, you learn so much very quickly and being young is the best time to give it a go!

PLUS, take advantage of Global Entrepreneurship Week and unleash the entrepreneur in your young people by getting The Frank Team to come and do what we love to do – inspiring young entrepreneurs. November 17^th to 23^rd is the week. The official page is http://www.unleashingideas.org/country/AU for Australia.

The FRANK Team was founded and is run by young entrepreneurs. We have a passion for encouraging and empowering other young people to believe in their ideas, get started and build a life they love in control of their own business.

There is our one hour Business YOU program.

Through stories and demonstrations the young people will come to learn what it means to think like an entrepreneur and how that can help them in their lives and careers. They will hear directly from a young person out there right now running their own business. It covers what an entrepreneur is and asks students to look at themselves, innovative thinking and start up steps and tips. It is great for years 10 through to 12.

Or perhaps our YOUTH-BIZ workshop that can be run as a three hour or full day workshop would be best for your students.

This is an interactive student workshop for up to 50 Year 10 and 11 students on entrepreneurial, innovation & essential career skills. It covers personality traits of an entrepreneur, thinking innovatively, tools for creating opportunities, inspiration from role models, basic steps for starting a business plus support and connection to the youth biz industry.

As always, The Frank Team comes to you as we have fab young entrepreneur presenters in each state and we bring all of our resources with us to run the sessions.

Prices for our one hour Business YOU sessions start from $465 (inc GST - for metro locations) and from $1500 (inc GST - for metro locations) for a full day for the Youth Biz workshops.

Contact us now for a personalised quote and outline of Business YOU and YOUTH-BIZ. Help your young people learn more about starting their own business today!

Call Jessica on (02)99664333 or email Jessica@frankteam.com.au ASAP to book in time for Global Entrepreneurship Week from November 17^th to 23^rd.

To learn more about how I started my first business at the age of 19 head on over to http://www.frankteam.com.au/ourteam/about-jessica-kiely.aspx

Remember to learn more about what it is to be a young entrepreneur at http://www.frankteam.com.au/bizarticles/calling-all-young-entrepreneurs.aspx

We look forward to unleashing more young entrepreneurs just like Jemma with your help!

Jessica Kiely