Strategies that help you cope with stress

“It isn’t stress that makes us fall – it’s how we respond to stressful events.” – Wayde Goodall

Stress is a mental, emotional or physical strain caused by anxiety or overwork. It’s a state of mental or emotional strain or tension that results from adverse or demanding circumstances. The situations and pressures that cause stress are known as stressors. And so the things that put high demands on you can be stressful.  Stress may cause such symptoms as raised blood pressure or depression. It is not uncommon if you feel you are under an abnormal pressure, as nearly everyone of us experiences stress at times.  However, there is no escaping from stress, because stress is a part of our everyday life. Hence, what you need is to implement effective strategies to manage stress. Here are some strategies that you might find helpful to cope with stress.

1-As you know that healthy habits make sense, as such, being fit more in to your diet is an important factor. Transforming your eating habits with those that are suggested based on health grounds and those that are helpful in reducing your stress is a great way to cope with your stress effectively. Those who take healthy and well-balanced diet are likely to be far less stressed than those who do not do so. Remember that if you eat well, you will feel well. So, eat well-balanced meals, so that you may ease your stress and depression. Some of the foods that fight stress and anxiety and depression are:  Ginger, Garlic, spinach, Oats, pure dark chocolate, avocados, broccoli, nuts, orange, apple and berries etc. It is advisable to see the doctor to get the nutritional advice if you have persistent anxiety symptoms.

2- Excess of anything is not good. Excessive use of alcohol and caffeine can lead to increased risk of health problems. It can aggravate anxiety and trigger panic attacks. Studies reveal that excessive alcohol consumption can increase the blood pressure and harm the brain in addition to causing anxiety and depression. So, limiting alcohol and caffeine consumption is especially important for reducing the stress and anxiety.

3-Being an important part of your health, sleep plays a vital role in maintaining good health and well-being throughout your life. If you want to achieve an optimal level of health, you need to keep a regular healthy sleep schedule. It not only helps in recovering illness more quickly, but it also aids greatly in reducing your stress to a greater extent. One of the best ways to get good night’s sleep is to do regular exercise. Remember that being sleep deprived is a factor that contributes to stress, while the right amount of sleep can definitely reduce levels of stress.

4-Regular physical activity is one of the most important things that you can do to keep you healthy and fit and so to lower your stress level considerably. If you don’t have any chronic health condition, you can choose any form of exercise, from aerobics to yoga. However, it is better to find the relaxation exercise that can work for you.

5-Taking timeout of your busy schedule each day is a great way to relieve stress. There is great benefit in taking time out and relaxing, as it helps you recover from the stress of your everyday life. Taking timeout means stopping an activity temporarily or spending time away from working or studying. In this way, you can learn how to relax your mind and body and better breathing techniques.

6- One of the best ways to relieve your stress and relax is to practice relaxation techniques, such as, deep breathing. If you want to feel calmer, relaxed and peaceful, deep breathing techniques are a great way. The good thing about deep breathing exercises is that they can be done anywhere and anytime. Deep breathing exercises can help you feel connected to your body. So, the next time you feel angry, stressed or anxious, take a few deep breaths and feel the flow of air as you inhale. This way will definitely help you beat your stress before it beats you.

““Next time you’re stressed, take a step back, inhale and laugh. Remember who you are and why you’re here. You’re never given anything in this world that you can’t handle. Be strong, be flexible, love yourself, and love others. Always remember, just keep moving forward.”

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Some causes of Indiscipline among the employees of a Business Organization

“How employees treat customers is a reflection of how leaders treat employees. If you want your employees to be good to your customers, be good to your employees.”

Indiscipline, in its simplest terms, is lack of control or discipline. It’s transgression of some established and definite rules. It’s committing of acts that violate a law or command or moral code. In terms of a business organization, it is violation of rules and regulations. It is an act which is prejudicial to the interest of employers leading to impair a business organization. There are several causes of indiscipline among the employees. Some of them are mentioned herein.

The factors that overshadow the minds of the employees play an important role in leading them to be undisciplined in the workplace. Poverty, frustration, or a state of being in debts are such factors that not only cause them to misbehave with others but can also make them nervous or disturbed. In such situations, it is difficult for them to think about the constructive ways or working in a peaceful manner.

Indiscipline is generally created because of unfair practices in the workplace. Such as, wage differentials, unfair declaration or nonpayment of bonus.

Job role overload, underload or job ambiguity can be some of the causes of indiscipline among workers. If there is a lot of ambiguity as to which tasks should be performed and which should be excluded and if it makes unclear as to whom and when an employee should report, it becomes a great cause of stress and undisciplined behavior.

Similarly, role-overload and role- underload are such situations that lead to the employees to be undisciplined at work. The former indicates that the employees are expected to do the tasks which are beyond their capacity and the time permits them to perform such tasks, while in case of latter, they have too little work to do – Frustration in both situations is bound to develop leading them to adopt unethical behavior.

It happens quite often that the employees face problems as different groups of people have different expectations from them in an organization and it is difficult for the employees to fulfill dissimilar expectations at the same time in such situations. These inconsistent expectations are associated with the role which is called as role-conflict- causing disturbance creates indiscipline among the employees.

One of the greatest causes of Indiscipline among the employees or leading them to misconduct is that they do not consider the job placement process as proper. Such as, non-placement of the right persons on the right jobs; not providing appropriate opportunities to employees, for professional growth and development, who are suitable for particular jobs in terms of their qualification and experience and training.

Improper service conditions of defective communication process by superiors can also lead to indiscipline. Besides, ineffective leadership style can be one of the causes for employees to involve in misconduct.

It is thus important for a business management to determine in its standing orders as to what shall constitute the acts of misconduct and at the same time, suggest the ways to resolve the matters. It would be of great importance if employees who are involved in misconduct should be provided an opportunity to explain themselves. This would not only help in being aware of the causes, but would also lead to come to firm decision about the situations.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Reaping the benefits of hard work in life

“Hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard.” 

The above saying is replete with fact. It also offers an advice not to underestimate the importance of hard work regardless whether or not one is talented. Hard work is necessary if you want to get anywhere in life. Hard work is so important that even if there is a lack of talent, it can be compensated with hard work, but there is no substitute for hard work. It is said to be the stepping stone to success. Hard work does not go waste, but it pays off in the end. Thus, the work you put in is what you get out.

If you work hard and do your best, it develops the sense of satisfaction that you put enough efforts to get the results. On the one hand, hard work improves the chances of success in your mission, on the other hand, it gives you the sense that you are not at fault and you did what was required to do in order to achieve success.

A person who tends to work hard paves the ways for self-development which lead him to accomplish the ambitions of his life. He becomes self-disciplined. And being self-disciplined is such a quality that makes you self-motivated and enables you to do what is necessary or sensible without needing to be urged by somebody else. This way, you can not only deal with all the affairs of life effectively, but can also face courageously if there are fears or failures.

It is true that a talented or an intelligent person possesses an unusual or natural ability or skill to do something well, but being talented only is not enough to make success certain or achieve a specific outcome, unless it is accompanied by sheer hard work. The ability of a talented person can be compensated with hard work. Even though a person is intelligent or talented, he should not underestimate the importance of hard work, because talent grows vigorously and healthily and mental abilities develop to a desired level due to hard work. In this way, being a hard working person, you can embellish your personality, polish your talents and unlock your potentials so that you can achieve what you want to achieve in life.

It must be noted that “Good things come to those who believe. Better things come to those who are patient, and the best things come to those who don’t give up.” Remember that “chance favors the prepared mind.” and one is mentally prepared well through hard work. Hard work gives results and you will get what you deserve in terms of your hard work. Hence, it can be rightly said that hard work can bring sure success even if there is a little luck. If you want to become a successful person in life, you must work hard against enormous odds to achieve the success you desire. Then, no wonder – if you attribute your success to hard work rather than your luck because good luck comes from hard work.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

How Is a manager responsible for his employees’ Professional growth and development?

“A good manager finds satisfaction in helping others be productive, not being the most productive person in the room.” – Paul Glen

A manager should know how and when he needs to shift his thinking from business needs to people’s wants and needs. He must understand employees and their professional needs. If there is constant trust and support from the manager towards employees’ professional development, the employees can perform better in whatever assignments they are expected of. It must be noted that, to a greater extent, manager is responsible for linking the organization’s needs to employee career goals. Hence, a successful manager is he who knows better how to shift his style to work effectively for both organizational development and the professional development of employees.

He should be perceptive to his people’s wants and needs and sensitive to events as well as in dealing with their emotional issues. It is then only he can handle situations successfully. Since he is responsible to delegate responsibilities to his subordinates based on their specializations and make the most of team building to develop efficiencies, competencies and organizational development, he should know whom to promote for the betterment of the organization. Unless a manager takes necessary steps towards enhancing each employee’s current job performance and providing future job opportunities; he differentiates between the costs of bringing in talent from outside and promoting the capable employees from within, he may not be regarded as a successful manager.

A manager who does not take time to foster his employees’ talents and to create right opportunities for them accordingly; who does not appreciate them and create a plan for their growth within the organization, neither he remains in their good books nor is he remembered. It is worthwhile to mention that good people are always remembered as blessing, while those who are not good to others, are soon forgotten like a bad dream.

It is important for a good manager to understand the professional needs of his subordinates. Those who are capable enough and worthy of it, should be promoted for professional growth and development. It is worth mentioning what has been pointed out by H.S.M.Burns, “A good Manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him.”

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Benefits of Ratio Analysis in a Business Organization

Ratio analysis is a useful management tool that will improve your understanding of financial results and trends over time, and provide key indicators of organizational performance. Managers will use ratio analysis to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses from which strategies and initiatives can be formed.

A financial ratio or accounting ratio is a relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise’s financial statements. It may also be defined as the relationship between two accounting figures, expressed mathematically. Ratio Analysis is a useful management tool of a business organization. It’s a simple mathematical expression shown in terms of another number, but it provides important insights in to various financial areas of a business organization. Simplifying the understanding of Financial Statements, they reveal the inter relationship between various financial figures which in turn enables to gain insights in making forward-looking and projections accordingly. Ratio analysis also facilitates decision making process of a business entity on the basis of the qualitative data being obtained from the Financial Statements.

Notwithstanding that ratio analysis is made on the basis of the accounting data which is historical in nature, but the study of trends and evaluating the past performance of a business can facilitate in effective planning and controlling and forecasting which is of great assistance in decision making process about the future of a business organization. Besides, establishing a relationship between two figures and adding significance, ratios facilitate to make comparison of a firm with its own performance in the past while it enables to compare one business firm with another in the industry. More to the point, a comparison of a firm that has attained expected results can also be made through ratio analysis.

Ratios are calculated on the basis of accounting data that in turn may be classified in a number of ways. They provide what is wanted or needed in a particular situation or by a particular group of people depending upon their interests in business.Liquidity ratios provide the information about the liquidity position of a business, that is, the ability of a business to meet its current obligations which is needed by short term creditors. The long term creditors are interested to know the solvency position of a business which is obtained on the basis of solvency ratios. As regards the performance of a business organization, the management needs to evaluate all the aspects of a business that are helpful in identifying the activities as well as the performance of a business entity and the same is achieved through activity ratioanalysis. Since a business is established to generates revenues and earn profits, it’s appropriate to raise these questions to analyze, such as, whether or not a business is making any money and if it does so, how profitable it is, as compared to the other business firms or competitors. The answers of these important questions are obtained with the help of profitability ratios, as they are used to assess the ability of a business entity to generate earnings. Often, there are times when it is important to determine the company’s financing methods or to know how leveraged the company is. In such situations, the leverage ratios are of great significance, as they are used to calculate the financial leverage of a company to provide the methods of financing and measure the ability to meet the financial obligations.

Having been classified under traditional classification or functional classification or the classification made on the basis of the importance, ratio analysis provide several key benefits to a business organization in order to determine its performance, profitability, liquidity, solvency and its associated risks with the help of coverage ratios. Ratio analysis is one of the important ways of financial analysis and the most common tool of managerial decision making process. If done effectively by a well-experienced person, they can help ward off many problems of a business while they enable to draw conclusions that are of great importance to improve the performance and the profitability of a business entity.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Strategic Management – Merits of Strategic Management

“Without strategy execution is aimless. Without execution strategy is useless.” –  Morris Chang

Strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company’s top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes.

Strategic management is a vitally important accompaniment to a business and owing to its dynamic role continues overall success as well as total organizational development.

It is meant for the organization to dwell on excellence with efficiency and effectiveness in overall performance while ascertaining long term goals. It’s also meant for creating value for customers, as well as shareholders.

What in perspective entails are the aspects signifying the value of planning ahead of times, and the way an organization goes about the accomplishment of its goals – which is what is said to be strategy. Planning ahead of times is to reap the desired results in future and special sort of planning is to lead taking intelligent actions on the choices while enabling to avoid the chances posing risks by virtue of the establishment of preset options.

It would be appropriate to mention an old saying which is analogous to the context that failure to plan is to plan for failure. It’s thus making plans ahead of times is very important thing to do in a business organization. Planning ahead of times is an artistic skill and special sort of planning is to add elegance to this skill. The same is true of strategic management, in the sense, it adopts special sort of plans- strategies and does it utmost for the overall implementation in a business organization.

Having been related to the mission and the vision of the organization, strategic management analyzes both environments of a business – external and internal.What in terms of external environment is to be done is that the opportunities and threats to a business are to be assessed, whereas, strengths and weaknesses underlying the internal environment, are to be ascertained.

Next to the process of analysis, strategic management formulates strategies and implements them accordingly for the total organizational development. In other words, it is to pave the path for organizational success and sets out the direction for the attainment of its long-term goals while focusing simultaneously on the total organizational objectives. In fact, what lies in the pursuit of strategic management is existent in a broader scopes and spectrum, but we would focus our attention mainly on internal environment. And that is in terms of personnel and finance function.The same is outlined herein briefly:

Before we discuss about personnel function and what strategic management has to do with it, it is worth mentioning that no other resource of an organization is as powerful as humans. A business will never prosper whose human element is ignored. The same message can be derived from the words of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart. Once he was asked a question that what could be the key factor to a successful organization, his reply was “People are the key.” This statement stands out as a guideline to any organization to sustain human assets, to preserve their relationship as well as to understand the conceptual dimensions in terms of their jobs, so that there can be overall achievement in organizational efficiency, effectiveness and development. Thus, in view of the same, the task of strategic analysis is to assess the relationship between the organization and the employees. In other words, it is an assessment of the strength and weakness of this relationship.

The Purposes of evaluating personnel function are as follows:-

Personnel function : The overall purpose of the personnel function is to manage the relationship between employees and the organization. Therefore, internal analysis of personnel function is an assessment of the strength and weakness of that relationship. This function can be analyzed by examining the following factors.

Assessing the the necessary skills of the employees.
Whether or not all necessary jobs are available.
Are the required training programs being conducted to develop the employees’ skills?
Ascertaining the Image of pay scale in the organization.
Evaluating Turnover and absenteeism
Conducting Performance evaluation properly and timely.

Organization structure must support strategies and facilitate successful implementation. Some of the things to be considered in terms of organizational structure are:
Does organizational structure make sense?
Is it confusing or it is designed appropriately?
Ascertaining whether or not it expedites communication.
Do morale and motivation of the employee seem to be low or appropriate?
Are the people unclear of what they are expected of?
Verifying coordination, Is there lack of coordination or is it being maintained effectively?
Verifying if there are lots of procedures and paper work.

The Finance Function
Finance Function is critical to any business. Every business needs to have up-to-date information about its financial strength and weakness. A successful business requires effective planning and financial management.

Financial statements reveal much about an organization’s operations, strength and weaknesses. They also serve as a basis for predicting future financial developments. Financial analysis helps greatly in ascertaining whether or not the strategy is working.

It’s important to make comprehensive financial analysis, as it leads to determine the business organization’s strength and weaknesses. Comprehensive Financial analysis consists of four elements. Ratio analysis, Interpretation of cash flow position, Analysis of retained earnings and predictions of future financial statements. All findings of financial analysis should be reduced to a stage where the strength and the weakness of an organization may be evaluated accurately. Then, the expected changes related to each item may be forecast. It would thus lead the managers to make effective decisions in relation to financial strength and weakness and potential earnings of a business organization.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Employability Skills – Why is it important to improve your employability skills?

“Employability is the ability to enthrall employers  with undisputable capabilities to optimize personal development and job growth.” – Terence Chiew

Employability has been defined as a set of essential abilities that involve in developing knowledge and expertise and the mindset that is necessary to work in the modern workplace. Your employability is nothing but your knowledge, skills and personal attributes that are important for you to gain work and work satisfactorily. The employability of a person must be regarded as a passport to the world of work. Irrespective of situations, whether you are a fresh graduate or a person who wants to get a better job, it’s necessary to enhance your employability skills, so as to find your dream job and perform the assigned tasks in a successful manner.

It must be noted that one cannot just rely on one’s degree alone considering that it would open the doors for employment. Of course, the degree or a required educational qualification is necessary to unlock the doors of employment or it may be said that the degree can make you an eligible candidate for applying a job. But, regardless of levels within a business environment, in order to survive successfully one needs to enhance one’s employability. Your knowledge, skills, desirable personal attributes and achievements are your valuable assets to create your value in the job market. Hence enhancing employability skills is very much important in today’s business world, as it enables you to improve the stated set of skills helping you greatly in the attainment of your personal goals.

The importance of improving employability skills also emerges from the fact that based on these skills, an individual can not only be fixed for different jobs or sector, but he can also be regarded as a suitable person for more advanced job assignments. In addition, organizations need to learn and develop themselves in order to sustain success in terms of performance, earnings and market share bringing changes for the better. Apart from that, creativity and innovation has become one of the top priorities of business organizations in today’s competitive market place. In order that these objectives may be attained to the desired level, there is always a need for such people who are qualified and have desirable personal qualities.

It is important to appraise yourself, especially in an official capacity, whether or not you are an employable person in terms of the qualities required for a particular job and in accordance with the job related activities that you have been dreaming of. It leads you to think what may be the required things for you to be done and evaluate whether or not you could perform the related tasks in a successful manner. Remember that if you want to work satisfactorily in your chosen occupation, you need to develop the set of skills accordingly and be aware of the things that you can offer your employer. At this stage, it is worth mentioning that your extra skills, mix of skills or soft skills that you have in addition to your educational qualification are now to be looked for by most employers. So it is nothing but your employability skills that can make you stand out from the crowd.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Reasons why you should improve your English writing skills in the work place

“Practice, practice, practice writing. Writing is a craft that requires both talent and acquired skills. You learn by doing, by making mistakes and then seeing where you went wrong.” –  Jeffrey A. Carver

Professionals in all fields need to have good writing and communication skills of English language. Effective writing ability must be regarded as an asset to a person, as it leads to create value for him. Whether or not your job involves writing frequently, it is important to enhance the writing skills, because gaining a good knowledge and improving writing skills effectively can lead you to get professional success. If you ever think about the reasons why you should improve your writing skills in the workplace, then this article might be of some help for you.

Professional Requirement: If on many occasions or a regular basis your job involves writing, then it is of great importance to pay attention on developing your writing skills. Effective writing skills help you convey your message accurately and the desired results may be attained accordingly through your writing skills. Even though there is no need for you to write regularly in the workplace, do not underestimate the importance of writing effectively. It is better that you give a though to improve your writing skills, so that you may write in a way as needed in case there is a requirement in the workplace.

Professional Credibility: Gaining credibility is essential in just about any role one performs in a business organization. Every employee is willing to gain professional credibility, but it is not to be achieved just like that or for no particular reason. In order to gain professional credibility, one needs to have developed certain set of soft skills. Good English writing skills is one of best soft skills that is duly acknowledged at the workplace. In this way, you will have gained your professional credibility if you improve English writings skills to a desired level.

Professional Development: Whether it is verbal or written, having good communication skills is a gateway to your professional success. Effective communication is one of the most important and sought after soft skills at modern workplace. Writing effectively can not only lead to provide you the positive chances for your employability, but it also helps you develop yourself in terms of your profession allowing you to gain good experience and exposure in your organization.

Developing leadership skills: Every Senior position, in many fields, leads to lead a team or junior employees or the newly hired employees. This involves your leadership skills. And leadership involves managing, coordinating, supervising, persuading, motivating, listening, supporting and giving a constructive criticism to the team members. In order that these activities may be performed in a desired way, you need to have good communication skills of both verbal and written. Effective writing skills is one of the best ways through which you can perform a lot of functions in order to develop and lead your team members.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

Some essential things you should learn about Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Ranging from basic to complex arithmetic operations, functions, offering graphing tools and pivot tables, Microsoft Excel allows users to organize, format and calculate data. In this way, Microsoft Excel has a great utility to help you do many things. It is therefore very much important to develop excel skills, as having a reasonable knowledge and skills of Microsoft Excel can help you propel both professionally and personally. If you think what essential things you need to learn and develop about Microsoft excel, this article might help you with that.

Entering basic Formulas: Microsoft Excel offers lots of formulas. You can not only get the desired results by learning how to enter formulas in the required rows and columns, but you can save your time and efforts to a great extent while getting even the complex arithmetic operations done with the help of Excel. The basic arithmetic operations that are commonly performed through Excel: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and percentage etc.

Making sub-totals or Grand totals: One of the most useful method of making total of the required number of rows or columns is to make use of sum totals formulas. For doing this, excel offers specific formulas that you can use in order to get the results. Not only that, it also helps you make the sub-totals which you can make use of it in case there is a need for you to do so.

Making various formats with values: Every so often, you may need to make different formats for the values entered in Excel Cells, such as, currency, percentage, fraction, accounting, time or various formats with dates. Excel helps you greatly in doing these things.

Creating tables: Whether it’s needed for your professional purpose or personal purpose, you may think it’s important to create tables for your data to be arranged accordingly. And you may also want the totals to be displayed under certain tables. This activity can also be performed with the help and assistance of Microsoft Excel.

Sorting Data: If there are times when you need to sort your data into ascending or descending order, or you want to apply the functionality of excel for the specific rows and columns, excel will let you do so effectively.

Filtering records in a table: Sometimes or often you would like to filter your data in a table, that is, hiding the data, except the rows you want to view. You can use the auto filtering feature of Microsoft Excel to perform this thing as per your requirement.

Locking or unlocking features: Microsoft Excel is of great help in letting you perform this activity. Whether it be your personal requirement or official, it might be important for you to lock the rows, columns or ranges, so that the data may not be view or manipulated by any other person except you. Whenever you need it, you can use this feature of locking and unlocking the different ranges of your data. Similarly, you can protect or hide your spreadsheets from being viewed by others by using passwords.

Fixing Scale for printing your worksheets: As and when needed, you can use this feature of Excel to fix the area to be printed. You may also adjust in a way that your data may be printed on one page. Not only this feature of Excel aids you greatly to fix the printing area according to your requirement, but it also allows you to print the page numbers, date, time and file name on the printouts.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India

One bad apple spoils the whole bunch – Does it relate to a Business Organization?

Hiring the right persons for the jobs is one of the most significant decisions that a management makes. It has a lot to do with performance and progress of a business organization. Hence, it is important to ensure at the time when job placement process is being done that the experienced and skilled people are being appointed, so that an organization may lead itself towards attaining its predefined goals and objectives successfully while performing in a desired way. If a qualified and talented person is not appointed and a wrong or an unsuitable person is placed in the right chair, the associated results might not be in agreement with what has been expected of.

The chair that is to be allotted to a person or a a position created is always appropriate, as the position is created based on certain job requirements, job specifications and job descriptions, but what necessary is to observe whether or not a suitable person (in terms of qualification, skills and personal attributes) has been assigned to that particular chair or position. This is very much important because placing an unsuitable person in the right chair or position might be damaging to an organization.

If a person appointed for a particular position has no required qualification, abilities, qualities or leadership skills, the decision making process associated with that position is not effective. In case of the positions in which there is a need for leading the people in a way it’s needed, the situation becomes more harmful to an organization because that person is unable to lead the team towards attaining desired results in a successful manner. Such a person is not capable enough for managing his tasks efficiently, nor can he be in a position to make decisions effectively. As regards demeanor and behavior, the whole group of people is affected. It might lead them to adopt similar attitude or bad behavior influencing them to reduce their performance. However, most of the decisions of such persons are not beneficial to an organization and nor to the employees.

There are several activities that are to be carried out in an organization under the effective observation and control. Since they are incapable to lead the team effectively to attain the goals or objectives, the whole performance of a department or a division of an organization gets affected.

If it’s to be considered based on the concepts attained through MBO- Management by Objectives which is aimed at increasing organizational performance by aligning goals and subordinate objectives throughout the organization, there might be complete failure in the functioning state of a business organization. It thus may be rightly said that the above saying, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch” is meaningful to this situation. Hence, it is very much important for a business organization to hire the right people at the right place at the right time.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India