Developing the Right Opportunities

Thea Els

 

Not all of the questions you ask will have answers. For certain questions, you might get answers that do not excite you at all. However, some of the questions you ask will have answers that tell you that there might be a possibility for an opportunity to develop.

You note that I use the words "might" and "possibility" here. For an opportunity to exist, we should be able to combine four elements. Without all four, we have only a possibility, nothing more. However, as you get used to viewing the world from four different angles, you will very quickly start to think of all four elements automatically.

It is when you get to that point, that opportunities will just start "popping into your head". It is crucial that you take notes when an answer excites you. Right at that moment, you might think that you will not forget it, but we all forget things, even very important things. Make notes of your thoughts and include any thoughts that you might have about the other three elements. Give your possible opportunity a name, as by doing this you give the opportunity a mental anchor and summarise it to its essence. You will remember it better, and your subconscious mind will work harder to expand it from the essence of the possibility, to a more complete vision of the opportunity.

During the course of the day, use any spare time you might have, to look at your card and ask questions. While travelling in your car (record your thoughts rather than writing them down!), in the elevator and on the escalator, while having a cup of coffee in the canteen. When you are doing things that do not require you to think, use that time to search for opportunities and do that by questioning the whole world around you. Yes, even when you have to go to the bathroom! And remember to jot down all the thoughts you experienced when you get answers that excited you.

Dedicate time; 15 minutes per day should do it, to reflect on your findings and what possible opportunities might arise from it. Think about each of them, and jot down any additional thoughts you might have.

Try and find the "missing three" elements for each answer that you get when asking the questions. A very simple matrix will assist you in trying to find the missing elements - turning them into opportunities for yourself.

You will start off with something like this:

Date: 04 Feb '08
Needs: Computer keyboards, screens and mouse pads need cleaning
Means:?
Method to apply:?
Method to benefit:?
Potential:?
Notes: Saw Johnny's workstation today - looks terrible!

Date: 05 Feb '08
Needs: ?
Means: Old tires
Method to apply: ?
Method to benefit: ?
Potential: ?
Notes: Saw a whole heap of old tires at the scrap yard.

Date: 06 Feb '08
Needs: ?
Means: ?
Method to apply: Carwash used to wash cars.
Method to benefit: ?
Potential: ?
Notes: Drove past carwash and saw how it applied water, soap and mechanical action to wash car.

After a while, when reviewing these entries, you might progress to:

Date: 04 Feb '08

Needs: Computer keyboards, screens and mouse pads needs cleaning.
Means: PC cleaning box with solvent, glass cloth, water and drying chamois.
Method to apply: Provide PC cleaner with box and let him/her clean all PC user's computers.
Method to benefit: Start PC cleaning services and get big business to contract. R15 per PC per month?
Potential: Yes! There are 6 buildings in our area, each with more than a 1000 PC's.
That means R90 000 per month!
Notes: Saw Johnny's workstation today - looks terrible - some keyboard keys seem sticky.

Date: 05 Feb '08
Needs: Mine dumps need stabilization to prevent erosion and pollution.
Means: Old tires.
Method to apply: ?
Method to benefit: Set up "mine dump" stabilization business to sell service.
Potential: ?
Notes: Saw a whole heap of old tires at the scrap yard. Scrap yard will pay me to remove their old tires. Find out what mines would pay to stabilize mine dumps.

Date: 06 Feb '08
Needs: How do fleet owners wash their large trucks?
Means: ?
Method to apply: Carwash used to wash cars.
Method to benefit: ?
Potential: ?
Notes: Drove past carwash and saw how it applied water, soap and mechanical action to wash cars.

Flag all the possible opportunities which you feel comfortable with that might turn into real opportunities. There are a number of ways in which you might like to prioritise the possible opportunities. In the above example, an overall "Potential" was used to prioritise. You might use various prioritising methods such as "Ease of implementation", "Require least capital outlay" or even:"I like this opportunity (scale of 1 to 5)". You decide how you would like to prioritise the opportunities. The method of prioritisation is far less important than the fact that you do prioritise and feel comfortable with how you prioritise.

As your opportunities develop over time, you will quickly realise that opportunities are very abundant to those looking for them. But opportunities alone are not enough! We have to do something with the opportunities.

In the next chapter, we will look at a terrific tool that will help you turn your opportunities into complete and compelling business visions - to get the most from your opportunities.

To find opportunities - look for alternatives, no matter how satisfied you are with a situation. Everything can be improved. Every improvement is an opportunity.

Chapter reminders:

1. Every opportunity has 4 elements:
-Needs
-Means to fulfill the need
-Method to apply the means to fulfill the need
-Method for you to benefit.

2. Get into the habit of looking at things from different angles - each angle one of the elements of an opportunity.

3. Develop opportunities by filling in the blanks!

4. Prioritise the opportunities

http://www.bizwave.co.za Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Thea_Els

Re-Imagining Retirement - Strategies to Help Re-Energize Your Life

John Trauth

 

When we speak about retirement, we usually refer, consciously or not, to a period of withdrawal. This may be tinged in Technicolor, with images of grandchildren, travel, and other things we dreamed of but didn't have time for during our employment phase, but rarely does the concept include commitment, leveraging our personal resources to impact a world view, or connecting to our community in a more profound way than had previously been envisaged. So, when Jimmy Carter, or George Soros or even Bill Gates demonstrate the impact of wisdom and leverage, we respond to their challenge as a product of prestige (Carter) or money (Gates and Soros). Rarely does it occur to any of us that their retirement world view is an extension of their working life.

Let's explore the subconscious root of our concept of retirement. For many of us, our internal sense of personal energy is connected to a mechanistic idea of the universe. The medieval world saw God as the great clockmaker who wound the universe into action and therefore the world and our actions within were predetermined. This was a powerful image and one which persisted in science well into the 20th century. But the experimentation of one man, Albert Einstein, changed the basic scientific face of this belief system forever. He demonstrated that energy creates energy, that the universe was not mechanical but self-energizing. And that is the most important scientific concept inherited by the 21st century.

But what does that have to do with retirement, and how does science, or nuclear fission or the clockmaker God impact your retirement? Well the simple answer is that how we see retirement and our associations to it are, in part, a response to whether we see our lives as mechanistic (i.e. slowly running out of energy, which includes withdrawal, a narrowing of options and a preordained set of options) or whether we see it as an opportunity to leverage and expand the sum total of everything we have learned and earned up to this moment in our lives

This second option, seeing ourselves as a resource to the world, is psychologically challenging and possibly even frightening. We might associate this to a responsibility that Jimmy Carter or Bill Gates might take on, but not us. But the other option is to think of yourself, your past, and your passions as a moment of assessment: how do you want to be remembered? What are your connections to the world at this phase of your life? Will your legacy focus inward, to family, travel, pleasure, or outward to your community, your country or even to the world at large?

The challenge of this last option, to see ourselves as people at the peak of our wisdom and capacity, carries with it both great opportunity and corresponding responsibility. My interest is to allow us to acknowledge our debt to past concepts, including the mechanical universe and all the limitations that implies, and to encourage choice of another kind. By doing so, we can re-imagine a retirement in which we can potentially enhance and leverage our accumulated resources and operate from that freedom. And in that vision, freed from the constraints of mechanical fatigue, we recognize the renewable source of our own energy, building upon a lifetime of thought and experience, an accumulation of matter ready to create new matter.

John Trauth is co-author of Your Retirement, Your Way (McGraw-Hill, 2007), a step-by-step curriculum which explains the secrets for happiness in retirement and helps readers prepare for the psychological, strategic and financial aspects of this major life transition. Learn more about this book and take the free "retirement readiness quiz" at http://www.YourRetirementYourWay.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Trauth