Secreto de Vida #1: Primera fuerza de conciencia

"Los antiguos kabbalistas describieron el Bing Bang 2,000 anos de que lo hiciera la ciencia moderna. Tambien advirtieron que la obstruccion de las arterias era la causa de la enfermedad cardiaca y de los ataques cerebrovasculares, 20 siglos antes que la ciencia medica llegara a la misma conclusion. El Zohar dijo que la Tierra era una esfera con siete continentes 1,500 antes que Colon se hiciera a la mae. Durante milenios, los kabbalistas han hablado de universos paralelos, de los atomos, de la velocidad de la Luz y de otras verdades cientificas que hoy damos por sentadas pero que se dedconocan por completo hace 100 anos, mas aun hace 2,000. Por lo tanto, si los kabbalistas lograron ver todo esto, quizas deberiamos dedicar un momento a considerar su enfoque relativo a una fuerza diferenciada de conciencia que reside en lo mas recondito de nuestra mente..... [EL ADVERSARIO = NUESTRO EGO]." - Yehuda Berg
Reglas Espirituales de las Relaciones, Kabbalah Center International, 2008.

Entrepreneur's Magazine "THE RULES" for Doing Business in Bars

By Ross McCammon

Because this isn't really about cocktails. It's about business.
I work at Esquire, and we drink on occasion. We drink when things need to be celebrated, contemplated, figured out--but languidly, casually, without a clear goal in mind. We drink for defined periods of time and not all that often, but we drink. We drink with each other or with people we're getting to know. We drink in the conference room. We drink at bars. We drink to build relationships, to learn things. We're not looking for an escape but the opposite of escape. We don't want to lose something but gain something--an idea or a partnership or a new way of looking at our existing ideas and partnerships. Serious stuff, if you think about it. We think drinking is good for business when done the right way. So there are rules that we've worked out from drinking, from sharing knowledge about drinking in the magazine, from being around people who know more about what we drink than we do. And the rules are like this...



You called the meeting, you get to the bar early. Even if you didn't call the meeting, you get there early. Because if you get there early, you begin defining relationships. Not only between you and the people you're meeting with, but between you and the bar itself: the cocktail waitresses, the bartenders, the guy sitting next to you. You have come to this bar for relationships. You might as well begin making them.



You can sit at the bar. But standing's better. When you stand, you are able to receive. You are on the level of those who will approach you. You're not in a position of weakness. You're in a position of authority. Or at least parity. Anyway, you got there first. So you stand and wait. With a drink.

Risky Business Part 1: Credit Risk

Risky business, its not just an 80's movie with a great title, its the nature of business itself. This week in major financial news sources the BP oil crisis continues and allegations of BP using "risky" or sub-par equipment highlighted. Other articles highlight the unnerving decline of the EU economy and its effect on Asian export businesses. Risk is undeniably the ever-present shadow of success in the markets and in business. Everyday businesses assume various risks in exchange for potential returns or rewards to capitalize upon. How does a manager, an executive of the company, or of a division within a company manage risks?
This article is the first of a three part article which will outline specific areas of risks related to external factors such as client risk/credit risks, export and political risks. Business owners must be proactive in risk prevention as they are in risk management. There are a few key areas where companies can focus their risk prevention efforts.
Companies small and large invest time, money, and hard work to secure new clients and retain previously existing clients. The flip side of the sales coin is the offer of credit terms and the associated risk. Most business in the US and globally is done on credit terms or financing and the more favorable terms are to clients, the easier a sales is to close. But, businesses must conduct due diligence and implement credit qualification standards for every potential client irrespective of how established as a brand name the client is or despite their reputation in the marketplace. Companies aggressively looking to develop business and execute purchase orders with new clients may overlook risk and ignore previously established credit standards for the sake of closing deals or securing new clients. In other cases, proper credit terms and standards may be neglected by small businesses because they may not have the budget nor the staff available to support a robust credit department in their company. Every sales opportunity must be subject to sound credit analysis, so that a company can best assess the ability of the potential client to repay for the goods or services they are purchasing.
Sales is about negotiation and maximizing the bottom line. Credit analysis and due diligence is about zero negotiation and 100% risk prevention. Here is an example: A prospective new client places the largest order to date to ACME Foods, signing a purchase order and/or a sales contract with Acme Foods. Then ACME Foods produces the product and ships, then invoices the client. ACME has now invested large dollars, time, and resources in execution of that sale. What happens if the client pays a 30% deposit upfront, but as for the balance... 2months down the road and even 3months down the road, there is no payment from the new client? ACME Foods has experienced a significant loss, and now must find a way to reconcile cash flow issues and implement a workable collections strategy, they are now in the mode of Risk Management. If they had Risk Prevention processes in place, through credit analysis would have been completed and the sale would have been subject to the risk assessment. Even in cases where there is a high level of risk attached to a potential client, there are ways to still do business with them if credit risk guarantee or credit risk insurance is utilized.
Centuries old, Credit Risk/Trade Credit Insurance is an under-utilized risk protection mechanism which allows companies to sell to any client whether they are high risk or low risk by protecting the seller from non-payment, default, and other issues of the buyer.
The next article will focus on Trade Credit Insurance and other Risk Guarantees which companies can utilize.
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Nitin Dacha is the Director of Financial Services at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation. Nitin also provides advisory services related to trade finance and project finance through his own advisory firm, Nitin Dacha LLC and can be reached at ndacha@gmail.com or (850) 445-9437.

The Leadership Challenge

The Book The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner inspire its readers to think about leadership as the heart of business. The authors invite their readers to take action, as everybody has instances where they can take control and make a difference through leadership. This is a “challenge.” A challenge to everybody out there who believes that leadership is a skill that only a few possess, but to believe that it can be learned and all of us have skills, traits and experiences that can lead others to do extraordinary things. The authors discussed three topics that are among the most inspiring characteristics for leadership. These processes are: Enable Others to Act, Recognize Contributions and Celebrate the Values and Victories. I’ll present my understanding of these three processes by applying it to my current work environment.

The authors discuss the fact leaders providing encouragement and exhortation to lead others to do extraordinary things isn’t enough. There must also be space for creativity and trust in orders to enable followers to act with their own judgment. According to (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p. 284), “the expectations that successful leaders hold provide the framework into which people fit their own realities.” This balance can be tricky as there is a fine line between providing clear instructions and expectations with getting to the point of micro-managing actions. This can de-motivate a follower and can pose a threat to the company as a whole: the leader is dedicating too much time in dictating steps versus dedicating time to “bigger” things and the follower is not working in his/her best capacity. "The best leaders bring out the best in their constituents. If the potential exists within us, leaders always find a way to bring it out of us" (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p283).

Business and Ethics: Mutually Exclusive?

It’s important to note that a sense of what is ethical varies from individual to individual, from group to group, and from nation to nation (and these ethics vary over time). As every country has its own laws, values and norms, it’s important for the given company to digest itself in what can be considered ethical locally, as well as in the countries that they do business. Pinto et al (1998) stated, “for ethical decision-making, sue the law as a baseline, not as a substitute for ethics” (p. 97). Having said this, as companies are in an ever-changing internal and external environment, how they handle their own ethical practices – both internally and externally – must also accordingly. If the company at stake has business practices in more than one country, the ethics guidelines must fit within each cultural parameter and not be handles as a global manner – as this is surely a recipe for disaster. This is so because an ethical practice in the United States, for example, may not be considered ethical in Tokyo or London. Among the concepts of ethics is the nature of business ethics and the relationship between ethics and the law. Because of this relationship, a company’s understanding of business law will help to understand what is and what is not considered by a society to be ethical behavior in business in that particular country.

As a final note, even though business ethics focuses on what is considered ethic in a business environment, it’s not considered just another form of ethics – it’s still ethics applied in the business context. Pinto, et al (1998) mentioned, “When a major corporation, its officers, managers, or employees make mistakes, they tend to do it big time, with lots of lots of press coverage.” At the end of the day, businesses run the world economy so it’s empirical for them to act in a ethical manner for society’s benefit.