You are Welcome to a Most rewarding moment today.

This is a live update of our Online Business Outreach, and it is open to everyone to participate. The meeting is currently ongoing on multiple social media platforms, and Nairaland is one of them.

The objective of this program is to equip participants with time-tested principles essential for building lasting and profitable businesses, and management best practice for increasing efficiency and profitability.

It will run through the day till the evening and everyone is welcome to participate.

How To Participate

I would like to know the number of active participants and the way to do this is to Click Like to this post.

As updates are made, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask.

There is a free Social Media Marketing Plan for participants at the end of the program.

I trust that you will be enriched with insights from this program.

Thank you

Understanding Timeless Principles and Best Practice

Inside everyone is the desire to be better. To be better at home, work, or school. This desire leads us to do things that we believe can make us better in different areas of our lives. There are 2 concepts that will help us in achieving this goal of being better- Principles and Best Practice.

PRINCIPLES are laws with universal application. They neither grow old, become less effective, or cease to exist. They can be applied in any context, situation, or country, and yet produce the same results. By their nature, principles are timeless, and as long as the earth exists, they will be with us. The Words spoken by God in the Bible fits the above description, and can therefore be referred to as timeless principles.

Principles are foundational, and every enterprise built on them will stand the test of time. A successful person would have values, commitments, and character built on principles. For an organization to be truly successful, principles will provide support for the structure, plans, culture, and policies.

There are 2 principles of the Bible that can be observed in our everyday activities. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets" - Matthew 7:12, (treat others how you want to be treated); and "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." - Matthew 25:29, (the person who makes good use of available resources will be given more, and the one who doesn't will lose the little he has).

BEST PRACTICE are methods and techniques that have being tested and proven to be very effective. It spans industries and are sometimes referred to as standards. There are management best practice, marketing best practice, IT service management best practice etc. IT Service Management involves best practice in the production of services for business. We will be adopting some methods from this field for improving effectiveness and efficiency in the production process.

Best practice evolve from an innovation. Successful innovations gradually become best practices. Best practices quickly become good practices, which become part of industry standards and regulations.

Successful innovation --> Best practice
Best practice --> Good practice
Good practice --> industry standards and regulation

Even though a method is seem as best practice today, over time it may become good practice when a more effective and efficient method is discovered. A good example for best practice in marketing is to make provision for engagement with customers through social media.

What do we take away from timeless principles and best practice? Principles are foundational for building successful lives and enterprises, while best practice is essential for effectiveness and efficiency in business. One grave mistake people make is building the foundation of their businesses on best practice- what is currently fashionable, without any consideration that it will fade away sooner than expected.

Our decision to build a profitable business on timeless principles becomes justified, because we expect the foundation to stand the test of time. From the Bible we learn of principles that were expressed 4,000 years ago, were relevant then, and are still relevant today.

I would appreciate it if you Like the first post on this thread.

I'm actually looking at least 300, to show that the information shared on this thread reached that much people.

Please keep checking out the thread through the day for live updates.

Acquaintance with the truths (principles) on which our Profitable Business is built on

Many of us are familiar with the story of creation in the Bible which occurred in Genesis 1. The high point of which is the creation of man.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." - Genesis 1:26-28.

There are a number truths expressed in the statement above, and we will use them to understand the principles involved and how to apply them to our business today.

"Let us make man..." is PLANNING, where intentions are declared. It is obvious that when this statement was made, there were multiple personalities involved, hence the need to communicate and agree on a proposed course of action. This is the first step taken when you're embarking on a project that involves more than one stakeholder. As we progress in the course, we will consider effective ways of doing this to get desired results.

"...in our image, after our likeness..." is DESIGN, and what is expressed is a prototype to use in designing. A prototype is an original or form that an object is produced from. It is a working model, and products are fashioned after it. This prototype may be mental, written, or represented in physical form.

"...let them have dominion..." is PURPOSE. Every project has its purpose clearly spelt out. This purpose might be expressed as vision, goal, objective, or mission statement. The most important thing is that it expresses the reason for the project.

"So God created man..." is DEVELOPMENT, the production process in the project. For this to be successful, care must be taken to follow every detail in the design. You are developing a product, service, or solution that will be consumed by your customers.

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them..." is EMPOWERMENT. Everyone involved in the project or business has to be equipped with the right resources. Policies, tools, processes, people, authority etc. Doing this properly ensures that your team members don't give unreasonable excuses.

"...Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion..." is PRODUCTIVITY (fruitful). The means by which purpose is achieved. The concept of productivity and profitability in this course is built from this part. Strategy is a coordinated means of achieving goals using available resources.

Our goal is achieving Business Profitability, and the strategy to achieve this is Productivity. For the rest of the program we will discuss some principles and best practices for achieving profitability.

Comments, questions and suggestions are also welcome

Mapping Truths to Reality

From earlier post, it was established that there were the following:

1. Planning
2. Design
3. Purpose
4. Development
5. Empowerment
6. Productivity

Planning, Design, Purpose, and Development have to do with an entity- MAN. Let us, for the sake of learning, relate these to our course of study. Remember, our course covers Business Profitability.

Productivity is the means by which the purpose will be achieved.

Let us map (relate) what we have learnt above to our subject of study

+ Entity - Our Business Organization
+ Purpose - Vision, Goals, and Objectives
+ Strategy - Productivity
+ Stages/ Phases - Fruitful/Productive; Multiply; Replenish; Subdue; and Dominion

The 5 stages that a Productive Business goes through

1. Productive - produce results, gainfully involved in productive activities

2. Multiply - Able to replicate results through other people and systems, leverage, leadership, delegation

3. Replenish - Fulfill

4. Subdue - Industry Leader, Market leader

5. Dominion - Authority, Influence, Power

TOPIC- Productivity

Productivity is the quality, state, or ability to create products or services that add value to others. It is measured by the ratio of output to input. Productivity expresses how many units of a product or service you can generate given a particular output.

Productivity is the strategy for Profitability in business. The more the output, all things being equal, the more productive a business organization is. Let us consider what it means to be productive.

PRODUCTIVE

To be productive is to be fruitful. It is being capable of producing something. A business organization exists to create value for its customers, and in return receive payment. This means that a business that is not productive will not survive for long, while a productive one will continually grow and thrive.

There are 2 major components of a productive business organization. If you are able to identify and improve on them, you will have a profitable business. These 2 components are EFFECTIVENESS and EFFICIENCY.

EFFECTIVENESS

Effectiveness is the capability of a business organization to produce a required result or effect. An effect business has capable, competent, qualified, and skillful people working in it. Every business has its vision, goals and objectives for existing, and effectiveness is the degree to which the business can achieve them.

For example, ABC Ltd is an educational business that delivers online courses to its students. It will need competent and qualified teachers, rich course contents, and a dependable means of delivering their courses. If ABC Ltd lacks any of these, it cannot be effective in delivering quality courses to its students.

In business management, effective is defined as "doing the right thing". Effectiveness can be learned and improved upon. We will consider one important method of improving effectiveness later on during the program.

EFFICIENCY

Efficiency is the ability to accomplish a required result without wasting resources. An efficient business organization is one that can properly manage its time, raw materials, personnel, money, effort, in acheiving maximum output.

Efficiency is the measure to which input is judiciously used for a particular task. It is expressed as the total units of output divided by total units of input.

For example, ABC Ltd uses 5 units of time, 3 units of skill, and 10 units of money to produce 50 units of output. Another firm, XYZ Ltd uses 7 units of time, 3 units of skill, and 9 units of money to produce the same output (50 units)

To measure their efficiency,

ABC Ltd = 50/5+3+10 = 50/18 = 2.77

XYZ Ltd = 50/7+3+9 = 50/19 = 2.63

From our calculation of efficiency above, ABC Ltd is more efficient in its use of resources in production.

PRODUCTIVITY = Effectiveness + Efficiency

To be productive is "doing the right thing" and "doing it rightly".