motivation

I read an article of Business Week about assignment of new grads. Usually in large company, grads are assigned through managers' interviews and decision following the aim of the company. However, in the case of Cisco, their department are chosen by the grads. Then, it works well so far.

It is interesting in terms of motivation, and my illusion about hiring. Hiring is a kind of contract. Employees have to work for employers, so decision making has to depend on employers, in any case, but actually it is not necessary. The important thing is to make a profit as much as they can. Even profit might not be important anymore. Happy relationships between people must be the most important. During writing like that, I'm feeling something wrong. I might be in older paradigm.

Anyway, that must be true. Motivation is important for their performance. Of course, it might not always be the best answer, but it is a large part of improving performance, at least for the new paradigm of working.

Agile process for setting up websites

Firstly, I thought I should prepare all the factors of websites, then move to building process, but if I follow a so-called agile development process, if my understanding is not complete, the website might be better to be set up earlier than the completion of the planning. As the planning is developing, the website is revised.

In actual projects, the process might have to be exclusive to clients and web developers, not to end users. However, in my case, there is no client, or say the client and the developer are the same person, me.

I'm not sure if agile, reflective processes suit setting up a kind of business, but it will become an experiment to figure it out.

Interactions between business approach and design approach

Now I'm struggling with naming of our website. Basically our activity is mainly web-based, so the naming is supposed to be really important. It is as if I was thinking about my baby's name.

If you think about naming, the process will be seemingly more sophisticated then it was usually thought as Igor, naming and branding company, shows on their website.

Interestingly, the process seems to be interactions between business approach and design approach. I've got the image of a basic framework for my new business, but it is not enough to make clear the basic information for the design strategy.

The power of writing down your dream

This, writing down your dream or target, would be a powerful tool to drive yourself. I'm still reading the small business start-up work book and it emphasises the power. It might be just coincidence, but a friend of mine told me almost the same thing.

There is a interesting sentense;
You need a clear vision of what success means to you in order to achieve it.

Yes, fair enough. There is no objective success in the world anymore, I suppose. The world is already kind of post modern, isn't it? We need to have the measurement for your success. It must be personal or specific.

Then, the book provides two questions about how the society change through your activity, and who you are in the situation. Personally these questions were not difficult, but making them simple was difficult. It mightn't have been necessary to be simple, but I just felt it must be simple; otherwise it might not work well, because the vision has to be clear, which means it must be simple.

Let's get started!!

So now, let's get started.
The purpose of this blog is to motivate myself and accelerate a process to set up my own business, and I would like to share what I think with people who think the similar things.

Then, in my hand, there is one book named "The Small Business Start-up Workbook: A Step-by-step Guide to Starting the Business You've Dreamed of". So anyway, try to follow the steps the book introduces.

By the way, why I chose this book was the book seemed to focus on business in UK than other books. Although this blog will not be about only UK market but more general and international approach (since my initial idea is free from location), I supposed that this book would give me more resourceful information as long as my basement is in London.

Anyway, the step 1 is "Having a design for life".
Each chapter has questions to answer after reading the chapter.
Let's try to answer them BEFORE reading it, in order to identify what I already know and what I need to know from now on.

Oh, these questions are not for each step but each chapter, so I should have mentioned the name of chapter 1. That is "Where to begin - What's the big idea".
Then, the questions are:
* How will balance be created between work life, personal life, and your satisfaction and expectations?
* What are the qualities and motivation factors affecting the proposed business?
* What are the advantages and disadvantages of going it alone?
* Why do you want to start up your own business and is it for you?

Ok, let's try to the answers in line:
* How will balance be created between work life, personal life, and your satisfaction and expectations?
A. Intuitively, I just feel it is about time. How to assign my time and what I assign my time to will be the key for balance between work life, but also quality might be important. I tend to too focus on work and career, but the balance will be very important anyway.

* What are the qualities and motivation factors affecting the proposed business?
A. Mmm, it is just my passion, isn't it? Maybe my knowledge and experience might be the quality. Network could be one of the qualities, couldn't it? It might hear too good, but I suppose pleasure of customers might be one of the motivation factors.

* What are the advantages and disadvantages of going it alone?
The advantages are less risk, flexible and I can follow my passion. The disadvantages are no supporters and advisers, less resourses and all drives you is just your passion.

* Why do you want to start up your own business and is it for you?
Because I feel there is opportunity and I can be exited about the idea, and I believe that the activity makes society happier.