Couple Names Son Krimson Tyde after UA

This past December 17th, two Alabama fans welcomed their new baby boy into the world and named him after their beloved UA team. Summer and Steven Steele settled on the named Krimson Tyde, giving the baby a unique name and spelling that will be sure to set him apart throughout his life.

When asked why they went with this decision, as some may find it odd that a couple would name a child after a sports team, they responded: “The reason we named him Krimson is that we are big Alabama fans and it is a very unique name and we loved it,” Summer Steele told Alabama Media Group on Sunday.

Although not very complicated, little Krimson, who weighed in at seven pounds and five ounces has been experiencing some stomach issues and he was brought back into the doctors care.While he recovers, the family has been facing scrutiny and media attention for the name. The family was surprised by how many people were interested in hearing their story and learning more about the baby boy. Krimson isnt’ t the first child for the Steeles. They have two other boys, Trenton and Dawson, that are glad to act as big brothers.

“To people speaking negatively about us naming him Krimson, it’s not their child nor family member so if they have nothing nice to say they don’t need to say nothing at all,” Steele said. She even took to social media, particularly Facebook to clarify that Krimson was a boy after some publications made the mistake of reporting that he was a girl. What is even more interesting about this story is that the Steeles aren’t the first set of parents to name their child after an Alabama sports team. There are 25 girls in Alabama named Crimson and six girls named Auburn born in 2012.

To see the town become so invested in the school is a great thing to witness and be a part of. UA is truly a large part of the state and the community at large.

Originally published here

Developing a Better Leadership Presence: Part 2

Becoming a leader is no walk in the park. It takes some time and hard work to bring a better leadership presence to a business. Many people can think they are a leader, but without the right mindset and presence, they will fall short on what it really means to lead. Here are some more tips to help develop a better leadership presence.

Truth

Something so trivial when it comes to leadership, leading a lifestyle of truth in leadership. If a leader can utilize the truth in every decision and tell the truth to the employees, an environment of trust can be built from it. If you try and seek out the truth within the company in situations, the employees can get behind your credibility.

Be Available

Something that leaders aren’t usually aware of in business, is being available for your employees when they need it. Take a page out of the book from professors in college, have office hours where people can come to you and ask for help or just talk about things that are going on. Keeping your availability open and giving your employees time to come to you with anything they feel is important at the time to them is crucial to being a great leader.

Vision

As a leader, you should already have a clear vision in what and how you want to do things, and if you don’t, define your vision. Know where you stand and be open about it so that your employees can see what your vision is for the business.

Honesty

Sometimes being honest about something is better than keeping the real truth to yourself. This is especially true with leadership and admitting to everyone when you may not know the answer to something. Being honest can show your employees that it is okay to ask for help and to be okay with not knowing everything. People aren’t perfect and there’s no reason to try and have your employees try to be perfect since you think you are in the first place.

You can find the first part of this blog here!

Developing a Better Leadership Presence

Being a better leader is what any business needs to be successful, this means that a leader needs to be able to differentiate being a boss and a leader. Becoming a true leader is not something anyone can do, but with the right mindset and steps, you can get closer to becoming one and having a better presence as a leader.

Connect

If you want to have a better presence as a leader, connecting with your employees on all levels is the first step. Many employees will place trust in a leader who cares for them on a human level and connects with them. Without trust or loyalty, you can’t go far as a leader.

Help Others

A good leader will see others who have potential and help them grow into success. This can be personal success or success within the business, but going out of one’s way to find success in others is a huge way to be a better leader.

Support

When an employee makes a decision that affects the business in any way, a good leader will support them in their choices. This means to fully believe in them and to stand behind them when it matters, this will further their trust in you as a leader and can result in them standing behind you when it matters.

Confidence

When you want to have more presence as a leader, having self-confidence in yourself as a leader and in your knowledge will go a long way with your employees. Be the one that knows the info, and when you don’t have the answer, don’t be afraid to be honest about it. Lastly, don’t over-do the confidence factor, don’t come off as too much, but make sure you know what you are talking about.

Encourage

This means that as a leader you should be able to cultivate a space where collaboration is encouraged as well as having equality in the workplace. Allowing your employees to collaborate together and with you on things will further the trust with the employees and also get you closer to success. Equality in the office is key as well, this means everyone is on the same level, including you.

Building A Strategic Plan

Many businesses create strategic plans to improve problems or as a catch-all for the business moving forward. There are a few things you should consider when building a strategic plan for a business.

Strategic plans aren’t made to solve a problem within a business. The reason for a strategic plan is to find success in your plans rather than work towards solutions of problems. Finding the path to success should be the focal point of the plan, problem-solving is up to the leaders within the business to help take care of when they arise.

Make sure your strategic plan is open to all aspects of the business. This means to fully identify the market you are trying to tap into. Find the customers that will be part of your business and the general audience you are trying to attract. Keeping them in mind when creating the plan will drive the path in the right direction.

Establish achievements within the company. Create goals to reach for while on our path. Having something on the horizon will offer some motivation on the path. Having stretch goals will be a little hard to reach, but will make the original goal seem easier to attain.

Be straightforward and keep the communication clear. Make sure that anyone can see the plan and understand it fully without complications. The easiest way to success is having everyone on the same page, and keeping the plan clear helps place everyone on the same foothold to achieve success. Make sure every employee understands the changes that need to be put in place for the plan to find success. Change is hard to foresee, but when the change is clear-cut and you give the heads up that the path to success is lined with change, more people will understand the changes.

The hardest part of any plan is implementing it and getting the plan in place. Outlining the end goals and why the plan is in place, or explaining the reasons things are in the plan will get your employees on the same page when implementing a strategic plan. The biggest failures for plans is when the whole team is not working within the plan, understand the plan, or understanding the goals for the plan. Getting your team all on the same page will pay dividends in the end results.

Article originally published on GormanHouston.org

Engaging Your Employees With a Strategic Plan

Running a business requires tremendous levels of experience and allocation of sufficient time towards management and administration. As a business manager or owner, it is your responsibility to rally all your workers and subordinates, bringing them together to set priorities and allocate resources through strategic planning. Proper strategic planning for your business should focus on five areas of importance.

Creating vision, mission, goals, and values

The strategic planning process should start with establishing the core values that advise the business’s operations and define its direction. The values should be followed by a mission and vision which define the business’s core existence and how it operates. The mission statement should be carefully crafted and stated in tandem with the businesses’ goals and values. Bringing together everybody within the business to participate in this preliminary planning stage enhances teamwork and a sense of belonging.

Team working

The corporate strategic planning process should also bring together different teams, each of which has specific responsibilities. The formation of teamwork within the organization should be strategized to within the departmental level. Each team should be rightly composed and structured to work as a unit. Different teams that share responsibilities should be able to effectively complete tasks and work together.

Creating action plans

Organizational action plans allow your organization to organize and plan on how it intends to achieve specific objectives. The organizational action planning process should factor-in the basic elements and components of a good action plan, including the specified resources, channeled towards accomplishing the goals, the milestones, and the timelines by when the tasks should be completed.

Progress evaluation

The progress evaluation process brings together everyone involved within the action plan to evaluate the progress achieved so far, and the areas of importance that should be addressed to realign the business for future performance. Organizational progress evaluation should be conducted at the individual employee level, the teamwork level, departmental level, and the entire organization level.

Benchmarking achievements

With proper planning, good resource allocation, and management of the workforce, an organization can easily achieve its targets. Benchmarking the achievements made in the short and long-term, preferably once or twice a year, allows the organization to appreciate employee participation through an elaborate rewarding process. This motivates workers to maintain their loyalty and dedication to further enhanced corporate performance.

Article originally published on GormanHouston.info

Basic Elements of a Strategic Plan

Essential Elements of a Strategic Plan

A strategic plan is an outline of how a company or organization will achieve success. This plan varies in size and complexity, from being one page to hundreds of pages, but its use is essential. The extent of the plan depends on the goals of the company. Every strategic plan is prepared with the same types of essential elements.

What is the Purpose of a Strategic Plan?

A strategy is a detailed, multi-step plan that is created to achieve one or several long-term goals. Developing a process is necessary to reduce waste and human errors caused by a lack of planning.

The Basic Elements of a Strategic Plan

Goalsetting is the main element of a strategic plan. Every plan must start with a goal that achieves a result. A company prepares a list of goals that are revealed in its vision or mission statement. The vision statement is a broad vision of how the company will appear in the future. The mission statement is a brief overview of the actions needed to achieve this vision.

The next element involves the actions that are needed to carry out the plan and achieve each goal. Next is to prepare a list of resources, such as capital or equipment, necessary to perform the actions.

Setting deadlines is another element that is needed to achieve goals in a timely manner. A deadline increases the value of a goal. A goal becomes less valuable if it can be completed at any time. This means that someone could wait years before starting it and take several more years to finish it.

Some companies prepare SWOT analyses that outline all of their strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. It’s a form of risk analysis that determines the business’s chances of achieving success or failure. The primary purpose is to help the staff become fully aware of the work needed to achieve goals, meet deadlines, and create long-lasting results.

Strategic planning is crucial to the creation of a successful individual, company, or nonprofit organization. This planning consists of many different steps that are needed to set and achieve meaningful goals. The first step is to determine the elements that are essential to the development of a good plan.

The Importance Of Branding To A Business

Branding is developing a strong identity for a particular product or company by designing a unique image or symbol and craving it on customer’s minds. Branding helps to identify a product and differentiate it from others. It also helps customers know what to expect from a company and creates a memorable impression on clients.

Branding is a way of distinguishing a business from its competitors and explaining what makes the business a better option.

Here are the benefits of branding to a business.

Generates New Leads

A well-known brand is likely to face fewer challenges when creating a referral scheme. When a brand is reputable, potential consumers have a positive impression of the company. Therefore, consumers can hardly mistrust referral schemes from a reputable brand because they are familiar with it.

Trust plays a pivotal role in business. If potential consumers don’t trust your brand, you will experience difficulties when generating new customers.

Recognition

This goes without saying. Branding plays a critical role in creating awareness about a product or service. The most crucial branding element is the organization’s logo, for it is the primary identifying feature of a business.

Businesses should strive to have their logos created by renowned designers. A well-designed logo induces easy remembrance of the organization. For a customer to purchase from a company, they must first recognize the business.

Elevates Business Value

The more a business is known among populations, the higher the prospect of elevated business value. Branding gives a company a competitive advantage in its industry. A business that is well recognized in an industry stands a higher chance to arrest the attention of investors with interest in that particular industry.

Employee Satisfaction

The joy of every employee is to work for a well-established business. Employees develop a sense of pride when they work for well-recognized brands. Such employees are quick to represent their brands and act as company ambassadors. Proud employees guide any potential customer looking to know more about the organization.

Builds Trust

Where there is no trust, there is no business. People are inclined to companies that are responsible and can be relied on. A reputable brand is likely to have a large customer base that trusts its products and services. When a company builds trust, it needs to do little persuasion to attract new customers and retain the existing ones.

Strategic Thinking vs. Strategic Planning

Planning and strategizing are two of the most critical aspects of a business – at all stages. In essence, you can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you want to go. Setting goals gives you targets to aim for to achieve progress. The business world has come up with many different strategies for setting and achieving goals, which are themselves constantly evolving into better, more efficient ways of doing things. Strategic thinking and strategic planning are two exercises that can help you build comprehensive goals and the steps you need to achieve them, but they are also two distinctly different events. Here is the difference between strategic thinking versus strategic planning.

Strategic thinking

Strategic thinking is essentially brainstorming with a more specific focus. Strategic thinking definitely encourages outside-the-box thinking but attempts to keep ideas somewhat close to the box, rather than encouraging even thoughts far from left field. With brainstorming, all ideas, no matter how ludicrous or seemingly ridiculous are encouraged. There is certainly value in brainstorming, such as when you are faced with an entirely new challenge no one has the slightest idea of how to solve or when you are deeply mired in a serious rut. Strategic thinking, however, generally starts off with a more specific problem to solve and some specific parameters to stay within. Brainstorming can help you solve seemingly impossible problems, while strategic thinking aims to solve more moderate issues with more moderate solutions.

Strategic Planning

Once you use strategic thinking to come up with a list of possibilities, you need to narrow it down to one or two best options, then come up with a series of actions steps or if/then statements to achieve them. For instance, if you want to target a new market, but are not sure if your product will really fly in that market or not, you might organize some focus groups or do some A/B testing. If the product shows a certain level of promise in that market, then you set a next action step. If it doesn’t show promise in that market, then you can pre-arrange a direction you want to head instead. Strategic planning allows you to have one session that covers multiple outcomes and gives you the next steps based on almost any outcome.

3 Times When Strategic Planning Should Not Be A Team Effort

Sometimes, plans can benefit from having the contributions of a wide range of viewpoints. Different people are able to envision different problems, which allow possible solutions or even alternative plans to be built directly into the plan. In other cases, however, to make cooks spoil the broth. While there are times a wide range of viewpoints can help make plans more comprehensive, there are also times when plans are better-made solo. Here are three times when strategic planning should not be a team effort.

1. When everyone has a competing agenda

There are times when everyone genuinely wants to make a plan better, but in other cases, they just want to get something for themselves. In that case, team planning meetings have a tendency to simply devolve into chaos. If you need to make strategic plans for something the team itself has a direct stake in, it is far better to make those plans yourself or to leave them to a single individual.

2. When the plans are for yourself

It does not matter what you are planning, there are always going to be people that have an opinion about what you should do. From going on vacation to planning a wedding, everyone will have an opinion and some will share it whether you ask for it or not. Some people can even get quite pushy about taking their advice. In some cases, it is better to keep it to yourself that you are even making plans at all and only ask a few qualified individuals for their input.

3. When you are first starting to make plans

Strategic planning is an ongoing process, not a singular event. The first step in the process is to develop at least some idea of what you want the end result to be. Then you can slowly begin letting people in on the plan that can help you flesh it out and make it more comprehensive. The stronger your plan grows, the more it can handle the weight of the mass of conflicting opinions that are sure to come. The more people that are involved, the more ideas, opinions, and agendas your idea will have to stand up to, so make sure it is as solid as possible before making it public.

Data & Business Strategy

Data has become an important factor in operating just about any business. While new IoT (Internet of Things) devices help business owners collect data, it’s also important to develop a system for curating that data. Without some way of analyzing that data and applying it to the business’ practices, it does little good to collect this information.

As a business leader, your ultimate goal should be to use data to help you promote a product that already has the potential to perform well. You may want to boost sales on an already popular product, or you may recognize a demand for a product you don’t yet manufacture. In either case, collecting data that relates to that product can help you reach the goals you have for marketing and selling that product.

Data collection can also be useful in helping you enter unfamiliar markets by giving you an indication of consumer spending habits. By analyzing the purchases of consumers in that market, you can measure how well your products will be received. This can help you devise a marketing strategy that will be customized to consumers in that market.

Often, people think of data analysis as a free tool that can help you compete in a global market. While that can be true up to a point, there are costs associated with collecting and using data that you should consider. For instance, what devices and software applications will be needed to collect and analyze that data? How will this data be stored? How long will you keep data on your system? These are all questions that will help you determine a strategy for collecting data, while also outlining the expenses associated with amassing and analyzing the data. Once you understand what’s involved in using data to grow your business, you’ll be better prepared to develop a strategy for collecting and using the data that’s most relevant to your business goals.

In the future, collecting data may become an even more essential aspect of operating your business. Data analytics may be used to help you determine what products to manufacture, when to order the raw materials to produce those products, and which consumers are most likely to buy those products. However, this doesn’t mean all data will be useful. Determining what data to collect will become as important as choosing the right hardware for storing that data.