Presignify

How many times have you asked someone to do something like “draw up a plan for such and such project”? Your employee completes the plan, but then you say, “That is not what I wanted” or “That is not how you do it”. And so the employee thinks: you didn’t tell me exactly how you wanted it done.

If you find yourself having back and forth misunderstandings with your employees, then you might have a communication problem. And this could be creating bad feelings, low morale and inefficiencies. To remedy this, perhaps it’s time you thought about creating a Policies and Procedures Manual.

Let’s look at 7 methods to strengthen communication and performance.

1. Implement Effective Policies and Procedures

A Policies and Procedures Manual is a communication tool designed to empower employers, managers and employees with a consistent approach to accomplishing their daily tasks. It provides a set of policies, plans, reports, forms, and work routines that convey the pulse of the organization.

A properly developed manual focuses your everyday business communications between employees and management on what is really important to get the job done. This focus is the first step in empowering your employees. Empowerment requires a shared vision, the communication of necessary information and adequate training.

2. Convey Management Policy and Vision

A manual should be used to communicate both corporate policies and the appropriate procedures for implementation of the policy in a combined style format. If employees know the vision, then they feel confident to make decisions. Keep in mind, though, policies should not be confused with procedures.

Policy - A definite course or method of action to guide and determine present and future decisions. A policy is a guide to decision-making under a given set of circumstances within the framework of corporate objectives, goals and management philosophies.

Procedure - A particular way of accomplishing something, or an established way of doing things. A procedure is a series of steps followed in a definite regular order that ensure the consistent and repetitive approach to actions.

3. Improve Communications and Efficiently Run Operations

A manual serves to translate the company’s business philosophies and desires into action. A well-designed manual is an invaluable communication tool for efficiently running operations within departments and bridging the gap between interrelated departments. If a department has specific information that it requires to process a task, then this information is easily captured in a form that accompanies the task. In business forms are commonplace, acting as a guide for such things as purchase orders, employment applications or asset requisitions.

4. Reduce Business Process Training Time

A policies and procedures manual is a functional guide for training new and existing employees. It prevents difficulties in performing duties due to lack of understanding or inconsistent approaches from personnel changes. And it will assist you in developing a consistent method in handling any task.

5. Improve Productivity and Decision Making

Policies and procedures speed up employee decision making by having a handy, authoritative source for answering questions. Well-developed and documented manuals can ensure compliance with regulatory agencies affecting your business, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), government contracting authorities and independent certification organizations (i.e. ISO).

6. Strengthen Organization and Quality

A comprehensive manual covering all departments within an organization can become a “quality” manual for the whole company. This will help ensure optimal operations and consistent delivery of the finest in product or service from the company.

It will “empower” employees to make decisions independently without the need or time delays of involving various levels of management. A well thought out manual will enable just about everyone in the organization the ability and flexibility to make the right decisions in his or her job responsibilities.

For example, a customer service representative should be able to handle a customer’s problem and have the authority to resolve the problem right on the spot. In addition, a production team should be able to diagnose a quality problem and formulate and resolve the problem in conjunction with engineering without having to go through various channels up and down the corporate ladder.

7. Meet Objectives with Policies and Procedures Manual

The goal of the policies and procedures manual is to identify the ways and means of communicating, as well as getting the service performed or the product manufactured at the least cost in the minimal amount of time. Not only will it be used to empower the organization, but it will have the added benefit of increasing job satisfaction and employee morale.

Chris Anderson is the managing director of Bizmanualz, Inc. and co-author of policies and procedures manuals, producing the layout, process design and implementation to increase performance.

To learn how to increase performance, visit: Bizmanualz, Inc.

Comments Off

At your next staff meeting consider leading your team through the following discussion.

This lesson is focused on getting people to think in terms of effective leadership. When helping a co-worker, or a customer, employees must understand their role as a leader. The exercise goes like this:

Introduction of the Exercise: (feel free to create your own similar story to support the exercise)

Like many who come from a small town, I was amazed at the number of transients who made the campus of the university I attended their local residence.

At first, the idea of having to walk past many of these individuals was a bit scary. I was not accustomed to being solicited for money or “spare change”.

However, after a few weeks of walking to class and regularly being asked for “a quarter for a cup of coffee”, the experience quickly became routine.

In fact, after a while, if I didn’t see one of the regular panhandlers for a period of time, I would wonder where he was keeping himself.

Certainly, after a brief period, the transients became a small part of my environment, part of my daily experience of college life. Over time, I got to know some of them by name, and they became familiar with who I was.

In any event, one of the most notable transients I became acquainted with was a man by the name of Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben could often be seen dragging a short rope behind him as he walked down the street.

You would think, by watching Uncle Ben, that he was delusional and under the misguided assumption that he had a dog tied to the end of the rope.

Uncle Ben would look back at the end of the rope as he walked, and say - “Come on now boy, keep up.”

Very often someone would witness this questionable behavior as Uncle Ben approached and they would ask simply, “Why are you pulling that rope?”

(At this point, give each team member a short piece of string and ask them to experiment with the “rope”. Pull it back and forth along the table. Then ask them to guess as to what Uncle Ben’s response is going to be. Then continue the story.)

Again, very often someone would witness the behavior as Uncle Ben approached, and they would ask simply, “Why are you pulling that rope?”

Uncle Ben would quickly reply, “Well have you ever tried PUSHING a rope? It doesn’t work very well!” This always made Uncle Ben holler in laughter as he kept walking past the person who fell victim to his humor.

You have to give Uncle Ben credit. Indeed, you can’t very well push a rope.

In conclusion, make this strong point to your group:

By “pulling” the rope, it will follow you anywhere. Try to “push” it, and the rope goes nowhere at all. The same can be said for the art of leadership.

Leadership is the ability to make people want to follow you. They do that when they see that you are willing to work alongside them and take a vested interest in their success.

People will follow you if they feel you know where you are taking them. If they feel you have integrity and truly care about their success.

We must each pull our co-workers with us. We must pull our customers toward us. Otherwise, we run the risk of pushing them all away.

Richard Gorham is the founder and President of Leadership-Tools, Inc. His web site, http://www.leadership-tools.com is dedicated to providing free tools and resources for today’s aspiring leaders. Offering high-quality tools in the areas of Business Planning, Leadership Development, Customer Service, Sales Management and Team Building.

Comments Off

It is possible to define the concept of organization as “the arrangement of socio-technical systems and the structure which has been born as a result of these arrangements. The first section of the definition includes the idea of flow organizationwhich means where, in which order and by which equipment the permanent duties in the socio- technical systems which will be done and the second section includes the idea of structuring and the structural organization which will born as a result of these arrangement facilities.

Socio-technical systems (and the enterprises that form the big portion of the systems, small and middle corporations) are in a dynamic environment. The continuously changing environment will force the systems which it has relation to the change and adaptation. In addition to this there will be some changes in the environment itself. We call the ability of adaptation to changes in both environment and in itself as “elasticity”. The corporations have to be elastic for not to have an end similar to suffocating due to the lack of ventilation.

We see that, people think that organization duties can be held by everyone, they don`t apply internal or external specialists (such as consultancy firms) and this is the one of the frequently seen structuring concepts. The problem, sourcing from this concept is called as “uncompleted organization”, causes waste of resource, uncompleted capacity usage and as results of these causes high secret and open costs which are higher than the employment cost for the responsible person or the unit for the organization.

The second most frequently seem major problem in small and middle corporations related with organization is the concept of informal organization. We mentioned setting rules and the necessity of putting these rules in a regular form. For doing this, these rules must be transformed to a written form. Otherwise, a relation ball which is nor written in the entity is formed, the improvisation actions, which are similar to organization and must be used only in extraordinary situations became ordinary and take the place of real organization facilities by time. This situation, that we can observe various samples such as, Board of Directors` Decision Notebooks not including important decisions, the production orders written immediately on cigarette boxes, constitutes the biggest problem to institutionalize, the prerequisite of a healthy growth and causes various drawbacks ranging from production losses to damaging of social peace.

The results sourcing from the insolvency of organizational problems become heavier as the labor costs increase. For this reason, such importance is given to organization units, taking place in the organization, and to organization technicals developing in an genuine form, in the countries where labor costs are high. The problems I mentioned in the article are not valid for only small and middle corporations, they are also valid for the firms taking place in the first 500 of Turkey.

Guven Baytok

Comments Off

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.

There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that investment in developing and commercialising those ideas will not be wasted.

Group Creativity

Effective group creativity results from managing a number of different elements, some of which are:

a) Group structure. Large and small groups, individual and pair combinations produce variations of creative output.

b) Motivation. Impacts the idea pool.

c) Task structure. Sets start and end points, establishes boundaries. Impacts creative output.

d) Tacit knowledge. Making tacit knowledge explicit and therefore tangible, useable and measurable.

e) Creative and critical thinking. Producing and then editing.

f) Idea valuation. Effective idea selection allows resources to be concentrated on development and commercialisation.

g) Network management. Tapping into knowledge, overcoming competency traps, bridging.

h) Culture. Creating a fostering environment.

i) Depth versus breadth. Which is more productive, to master the literature of the field or to frame break into other fields?

j) Process. Qualitative research shows that people who regularly generate lots of ideas follow a similar process, whether they know it or not.

These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com/

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

Kal Bishop MBA, is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached on http://www.managing-creativity.com/

Comments Off

Many speakers can’t resist the temptation to use big words while giving a speech. Sometimes it is a conscious effort to appear to be smart, sometimes it is an unconscious impulse because that’s what a speaker thinks he or she is supposed to do in a so-called “formal” speech.

Either way, it’s a bad idea.

Using big, long, or fancy words in a speech can damage you with your audience, not enhance your credibility. If you use a word that some or most members of your audience doesn’t understand, you are creating a distance between you and the audience. At some level, audience members are thinking, “Hey, this guy thinks he’s smarter than I am. Well, we’ll see about that!”

Another danger of using big words is that you will seem insecureit’s as if you were trying to hard. A part of what made both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton master communicators is that they were always quick to edit out big words that a speech writer put into draft remarks. Both Presidents understood the power of simple words.

Yes, throwing big words around has helped some media figures like William F. Buckley Jr. But if your primary goal is to communicate a message (and not creating an aristocratic image for yourself), then you should stick to smaller, shorter, and simpler words.

Remember, it’s not about dumbing down your ideas, it’s about clarity.

Why use “mitigate” when “lessen” will do fine?

Why use “jejune” when “ordinary” does the trick?

Also keep this in mind,: there are many big words that people are used to reading, but aren’t used to hearing. So if you say them out loud, it will take people a second to remember what they mean because they hear the word so infrequently. Better to use words that most people use in every day language.

This lesson is especially important for politicians. Winston Churchill prided himself in being able to give speeches on complicated foreign policy matters while never using words with more than two syllables. He understood that the ears process information differently than the eye does, and that the shorter the word the better for all speaking situations.

So if it’s good enough for Churchill, then it’s good enough for you too.

Comments Off

“Management” is an umbrella that covers a host of activities: leadership, working through others, planning, organizing, communicating, controlling, and making decisions, to name a few. How can you grasp all of these things? Fortunately, you don’t have to.

The basis of effective management tactics activity is to keep control of a situation without enough information, assets, or power to justify that control. That, as it happens, is also the essence of management.

In some ways management needs no introduction. Most of us do it one way or another every dayin families, social groups, clubs, and businesses. Management is universal; it exists whenever two or more people try to do something together. You may not notice this, however, because only mismanagement makes headlines. Planes arrive late, companies go bankrupt, orders are lost, and the Pentagon pays defense contractors several hundred dollars for parts that cost a few bucks Wal-Mart because management has somehow failed.

People become managers by several routes. Those who work for family-owned firms inherit the job. Others may have worked their way up the organization or married the boss’s son or daughter. Be especially suspicious of people who declare that they’re “born managers,” however. They can be identified by their total ignorance of management and their supreme confidence that their every decision is right. But how can you masquerade as a real manager? Very easily, as it often turns out. Few managers really take the time to clarify or analyze their objectives, actions, and motives for what they do. If you, on the other hand, spend even a fragment of your work day thinking about what you’re actually doing, you can rise above the rest of the pack. Especially if you maintain steady eye contact, dress neatly, and act sincere. In the words of George Burns, “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

Managers perform many activities. It’s important for you to understand what each one involves so you can set goals, assign tasks, and delegate the authority to get them done right.

The major areas of a business include purchasing, production, sales, and finance. Service and retail businesses, which make no tangible product, still have a core of similar areas (minus production) that are vital to success. In fact, lots of peopleespecially those who sell insurance-now call services “products” to make them sound less vague and intangible. Bluffers have to understand the role of several key management activities that will help them deal with the major areas of a business successfully.

Decision Making

One of the problems with being a manager is that you have to make decisions from time to time. This can be very troublesome, because decisions can blow up in your face. But do you really have to decide? Sometimes not. If you want to sidestep a decision without looking indecisive, you can often fall back on philosophical quotations such as “Sometimes the best decision is no decision” and “If it works, don’t fix it.”

In any event, don’t be intimidated into making a decision until you’ve analyzed the problem thoroughly.
Most panic decisions deal with symptoms of the problem and overlook the problem itself. If your car has a flat tire tomorrow morning, you could pump it up, but a block or two down the road it’ll probably be flat again. You mistakenly treated the symptom (lack of air), when the actual problem (a hole) went unsolved. Adroit bluffers also tend to let subordinates participate in making decisions. Go down to where the problem is and ask your workers, “What do you think is wrong?” Often, after they’ve recovered from the shock of being treated like people instead of robots, they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong because they knew it all along. It’s just that you’re the first boss who ever bothered to ask. Follow up the previous question with “What do you think we should do about it?” This may produce several solutions that are worth their weight in gold. The end result is that you’ve shifted the burden of defining problems and solving them from yourself to everybody in your work group. And, if the decision backfires, it’ll be more comforting to be able to stand up and say, “Well, we thought.. .” than to have to take all the blame yourself.

Delegating

You should be quick to delegate authority for routine decisions to subordinates. Delegation makes you look very professional. It also saves you time because you have to wrestle with only unusual, off-the-wall problems.

And how should you deal with those? Maybe the best thing to do is fall back on the suggestion offered a moment ago: call your subordinates together and have them propose what you should do. Emphasize, of course, that you’re not relinquishing your authority. You’re merely being a democratic leader who believes in lots of employee involvement. It won’t hurt to point out that the Japanese make decisions by consensus and participation, and you’re simply adopting a tried-and-true technique. It’s tough for anybody to dispute the success of the Japanese in the automobile industries these days especially in comparison to the former market leaders - the big 3 American car companies especially General Motors (GM) .

Communicating

It’s been argued that communication is one of the most valuable tricks of the management trade. Getting a simple message across the way you intended can be harder than it seems. People define words differently, have conflicting sets of priorities, and harbor hidden agendas that conspire to make communicating difficult.
One good rule of thumb is to follow the KISS technique-Keep It Simple, Stupid. Another guideline is to reject meaningless jargon. Because people write and speak to impress as well as to inform, they sometimes feel compelled to make memos and reports sound “businesslike” or profound. The result can be a pompous, indecipherable mess. If you believe you’re the target of a verbal snow job from subordinates, assert yourself by sending back a memo or report to be rewritten. This puts people on notice that you’re a no-nonsense, hard-headed manager who tells it like it is and expects others to do the same.

Accounting

Accounting is a fairly simple process. It’s mostly a blend of basic math and common sense. The information, however, is often susceptible to manipulation and several interpretations. You can take the advice of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who said, “Success depends on knowing what not to believe in accounting.”

The term “creative accounting” is a euphemism for doctoring the books to make a company look better than it is, while “conservative accounting” makes a company look mediocre or worse. Most corporations prefer to look like heroes to stockholders and bag ladies to the IRS.

As an effective manager you may encounter a mass of incomprehensible figures can cover their confusion with such phrases as: Do you really believe this bottom line is realistic? Have you checked for a recent FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) ruling on this? How much could this change between now and the end of the quarter? And Are you sure overhead has been allocated properly? Perhaps the best comment of all, however, is “You’ll have to simplify this so the board of directors will understand it.” That probably means that you’ll be able to understand it too.

It’s important to consider the impact of the notes at the end of accounting reports, because these can reveal situations or conditions that figures tend to hide. For example, one company discreetly admitted that it was so strapped for cash that it had borrowed on the cash surrender value of its president’s life insurance policy. Another’s report celebrated a rise in its stock price, but the cause was the death of its founder and president

He was an autocratic octogenarian well past his prime, and investors apparently believed the business was better off without him. Notes may reveal what the figures conceal. Catchy slogan, isn’t it?

Decision making , delegating , communicating as well as a simper understanding of basic accounting concepts that hold you steadfast in the turmoil of the management quagmire especially when you realize that most of your peers are incompetent .
In most cases they were promoted either for personal or family reasons or as a reward for some behavior or achievement that has little to do with the task at hand

All in all the selection process may have been totally at odds with the long term health and profitability of the firm or organization

A management career offers many benefits , Most of your collegues in the field are idiots .Enjoy the ” perks” of management

Art Fellon
Management Team Associate
Ace Employment Services Winnipeg
Experience in the Employment , Training and self help as well as library document preperation .
artfellon@yahoo.com
www.aceemploymentservices.net

Comments Off

Yes, if you are not organized, your time management plan will fall through in most instances, however if you have an organized plan, you are well on your way to success. Organizing plays a large role in managing time. When we are not organized, we are sending messages to other people. In addition, as you can see organizing is part of the plan.

With confident I can write this article, since in my past, I had great problems with staying organized. I tried desperately to manage my time, which often failed, since I did not have the ability, or thought I did not have the ability to organize. On my road to recovery, I learned a few special techniques that I would like to share with the readers, since someone, I am confident, will thank me for writing this article.

Organized:

Many suffer as a direct result of time management negligence. Studies have reported suffering that included frustration, remorse, anxiety, and low self-esteems. When we are not organized, we do not have one of the essential tools to manage our time. So to begin, let’s get organized!

Setting priorities is the start to organizing and setting a time management plan. Organizing brings forth a more productive lifestyle. First, you must start by not leaving your personal and work belongings floating around. If you desk and room are cluttered, and you run around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to figure out where you put that important document, then you are unorganized and your time is not managed properly.

If you have stuff lying around you do not need, it is wise to toss it in the garbage, since it only taking up space, and confusing you as to what is important. You can also start by placing your documents in storage areas appropriately suiting for the documents. Some of us prefer to place our documents in alphabetical order, but other prefers to store the documents by file name.

Next, you want to place your bills and other important papers in a folder with a file name. For example, if you have bills place the phone bill in a folder named telephone .files. Avoid vague file names since it can only confuse you later. As an editor and author, I learned the golden rule, which I feel applies to all situations in life. That golden rule is KISS. (Keep it Simple Stupid). By keeping it simple, you will not feel stupid later.

Create a separate file for your warranties, financial statements, insurance proofs, as well as keeping your birth records, marriage license, passports, or other important documents in a separate file. Again, be sure to label the files specifically so there are no confusions later. When you receive bills or other important papers in the mailbox, be sure to deal with each situation accordingly and in a timely manner. If you receive a lot of junk mail, toss it.

Most junk mail has nothing to offer us, and often are gimmicks to lower us in a scheme. If you can’t hang with the big dogs, stay on the porch with the puppies to avoid getting taking for a ride! This advice also includes emails. If you are, on a job, that requires the use of computers and you have your own mailbox…DO NOT give your mail address to any one that isn’t associated with your business. This will help manage your time, and keep you organized.

At least once a week if you toss out the junk, clean up the goods, and organize your important documents, you are well on your way to organizing a time management plan!

© 2005 www.your-offical-guide.com; All Rights Reserved

Steve Hall is the owner of http://www.your-official-guide.com, your one-stop location for getting the information you are looking for on a wide ranging and ever-growing list of subjects.

Need to get more time? Try the Soundview Executive Book Summaries.

Learn to Manage Your Time Effectively ==>Click Here

Comments Off

Successful business development executives increasingly are doing battle in the arena of strategic alliances and marketing partnerships. Nowadays getting the jump on your competition is not half as important as mapping out and deploying a targeted and unique value proposition with particular appeal to potentially compatible allies.

Successful business development executives increasingly are doing battle in the arena of strategic alliances and marketing partnerships. Nowadays getting the jump on your competition is not half as important as mapping out and deploying a targeted and unique value proposition with particular appeal to potentially compatible allies.

Take the old aphorism: “The early bird catches the worm?” It just doesn’t apply anymore. Even in the wild, naturists have discovered that ‘early on the job’ does not necessarily equate with success.

Consider this analogy:

Worms are slow, but they are expert at hiding. To catch one, birds must do more than just show up early. In the highly competitive world of birds, all the birds are up early. So, in practice, what distinguishes the successful bird from the hungry one is observation and preparation. Smart birds have figured out that worms are most vulnerable when they are in the act of eating.

The clever ones take care to study when, where, and what worms eat. The successful bird takes that data into account when making preparation! For example, one rather successful bird has learned that a certain type of worm finds a particular kind of leaf to be especially appealing. The wise bird has been observed using its beak to place the targeted worm’s preferred leaves in the worm’s vicinity.

The analogy of the clever bird applies not only in nature, but suggests a powerful strategic option available to you in business.

Knowing your target partner’s needs and decision structure gives you the edge over all other early birds. Whether you’re a CEO or a field executive with front line responsibility, you know that your prospects are capable of sophisticated camouflage. They are expert at hiding behind gatekeepers, red tape, misdirection, and layers of bureaucracy. So be it! Getting in front of potential partners takes more than showing up early. Executives responsible for cultivating business relationships must be able to increase their penetration effectiveness. They do so by providing prospects with “food” — in this case, a compelling level of data, analysis and capabilities presented in an extraordinary manner. The results of such highly creative, custom prepared initiatives are dramatic.

Your commitment to a content-based partnership initiative is a win-win strategy:

* Partnership options, sales opportunities and receptivity improve dramatically when prospects are prepped via well-designed initiative tools front-loaded with offers of relevant information.

* Superbly orchestrated interface meetings, powerful creative presentations and mouth-watering proposals (worthy of the partnership’s revenue potential) help prospective partners cut back on resistance and institutional firewalls.

* Most partnership executives are more inclined to bite into knowledge that treats them like a stakeholder. This approach improves their ability to evaluate, decide and be open to profiting from a prospective alliance.

Empowering your target with information is significantly more likely to get the deal done at the end of the day.

Increasingly, the Web is proving to be an ideal content delivery venue for initiative purposes. Content configured, digitally distributed partner initiatives are growing, but when it comes to relationship building face-to-face meetings are still essential.

Increased partnering productivity has a significant bearing on:
- finding good opportunities
- executive dialogue
- positive brand perceptions
- reducing the cost of partnership development
- buy-in from gatekeepers and influencers
- negotiating agreements.

It is never too early to start developing and implementing a targeted and effective Strategic Partnership Plan & Program. Feel free to contact the clever birds at Partner | M for assistance in this matter.

Harvey Kraft is Managing Director of Partner | M — partnershipsmedia.com — the California-based marketing consultancy specializing in executive support for strategic alliances and partnering initiatives. Mr. Kraft is a skilled partnerships executive, author and speaker, and creative marketing director with two decades of senior experience in the media, finance, publishing and wellness sectors.

Comments Off

In games of chance, what separates a player from a winner and are they mutually exclusive?

It takes some skill to be a good poker player. Certainly one needs to know the number of cards in a deck, how many suits in each deck and what the different hands are and which hand beats which. One must also be very good at math and be able to figure the odds of any card or hand showing up in the game and memory is an exceptional bonus.

Poker is more than a game of “chance;” chance takes the power away from the player. Poker is a game of choices that lead to a desired outcome and for a true winner there is no “luck” or “chance.”

In order to be a successful player, one must know why they are in the game in the first place. Are they there just for the sake of being in the game or are they there to win. There is the love of the game and the winning, but there is also losing.

Poker is much more than randomly playing each hand, it is a mind game as well. To be a successful player, that is, to continually stay in the game one must be able to put energy into the game and then be able to take that energy and more from the others. A game of cards is a “closed system,” and cannot sustain itself unless there are bets, and that means something has to be added. The addition is collateral, value or energy added to the game to keep it going, it is fuel that drives the game, when the money or collateral is gone so are the players.

All players know that in order to stay in the game they must continually feed the pot. The odds are that everyone in the game will win hands and lose hands and no one will win or lose all hands. So gamblers play odds and the odds are calculated during the game. Each player expects to lose a few hands and by playing the odds skilfully they will be the major winner at the end of the game. The game may include only one or many hands until the player stops putting energy (collateral) into the game.

In games of chance all participants are winners whether they have losing hands or not. The reason for the game is the game and an opportunity for the players to demonstrate their thoughts about themselves in a social interaction. Each player gets back from the game what he/she has mentally put into it, and the rewards are as individual as the player.

Who determines the winner in a game of poker? Most would agree it would be the one that walks away with the pot at the end of the game. However, this definition is really superficial because the root causes of the players are not considered. If one is playing long term strategy then walking away from the game a loser is only an illusion, it may well be just another step on the way to being a winner. So the strategies of others may never be judged accurately because the philosophy of any one particular player is unknown.

What separates a winner from a player or a loser with long-term gamblers is the internal thoughts of the player himself.

A player has many skills and control over how he plays his hands. He has some understanding of how other players play their hands from his own interaction with them. If the game is being played honestly the player has absolutely no control over the cards he receives as they are drawn randomly from a deck or several decks.

Some players stand out as winners over time because they continually win their hands, and yet all players have exactly the same odds or chances of getting the same cards from one game to another.

Is it that some players simply play their hands with more skill and can calculate the odds better or read the other players better? I believe it goes deeper than that.

When one looks around the table you see other players, you do not see their minds. It is the mind that drives the body, the body is the illusion of the player that turns over the cards, but the mind is controlling the game. It is the mind that creates the desire and the body that displays that desire physically.

One’s mind is the source that predetermines the outcome of the game. If it is within one’s thought process that he/she is a loser, then that is reflected in the physical part of the process, in this case the game. If one’s root thought is that he is a winner then the game will also reflect that thought in real life. If one considers her or himself just a player that is how the game will be played out. He will never be a consistent winner or loser but will go along with the ride as one who enjoys the game and breaks even.

All of these kinds of players can be considered winners at some level of understanding as the results of the game reflect their most inner thought about themselves and why they are in the game.

A winner does not go to the table to play poker. A winner does not consider him or herself a player. A winner has only one root thought and that is that he/she is a winner and that can only be reflected physically as one who wins most of the hands and walks away with the pot. It can not work any other way. If you know yourself as a winner then your life has to reflect that, it is a universal law. What you think must be manifested at some level of physical existence. All thoughts are manifested as physical things or circumstances. To the extent that one’s thought is known as truth; is the degree that it will be physically observable.

You cannot truthfully say that you are a winner if it is not observable physically. What you are displaying is a physical lie, you are lying to yourself about who you are and you are not in contact with your inner truth. If you say that you are a winner and consistently lose, you have displayed your ability to lie and fool yourself.

If you say that you are a loser and you consistently display that physically, then in fact you are a winner by your own definition because you are successfully creating what you know as you truth. You can never fool yourself. Your true thoughts are always displayed physically for all to see. It is also important to realize that you can never be judged accurately by others or even yourself unless the root cause for the physical observation is known and to know that one must communicate with the spiritual part or inner thought process of the individual.

If one knows oneself to be a winner in poker then that person is in direct control of the cards, they are no longer randomly distributed. The players root cause will control the cards so that the player is manifested as a winner. The spirit will know the hands of the other players and will cause the appropriate cards to be displayed, all participants act together in agreement at some level with this arrangement so there are no random losers and the winner is already known. The only exception to this is that the player may be playing the game from the superficial physical level. The ego always has the last word and his conscious thoughts about how to play any hand may get in the way.

If all the players have folded at the table except for yourself and another then you would guess at what cards he holds and would calculate what cards are needed to beat his hand. If you are playing the game at a strictly physical level you might be thinking “Royal Flush,” when all you really need is a pair of threes and you would have severely limited your odds of winning. A true winner would only hold the thought of winning knowing that he could, without the burden of having to figure out the winning hand or second guess his natural process for creating winning hands.

A player’s most inner thought is always reflected accurately at the poker table.

In physical life a persons most inner thought is always displayed accurately in his/her daily life. Judgements are always inaccurate and cannot reflect your truth unless the purpose of the mind is known.

To know oneself as a winner, one must demonstrate winning physically. To know oneself as a loser, one must also display that physically. To experience either one of these things physically then you must know that it was your thoughts that created the experience, not anyone else’s. You must also know that you can change your thoughts about who you are at any time and allow the process to reflect those thoughts physically and you do that by simply knowing what it is that you desire, and you do not try to control the process by allowing the ego to pick the winning cards.

A winner considers a losing hand as another step to winning in a game of strategy. Therefore the losing hand is actually a winning hand. All steps for a winner are winning steps because they bring to him/her what is desired, and the outcome is always visible or made real in physical terms.

You cannot play to be a winner; you are a winner first, then you become a player. A winner never gambles to win; he wins because that is who he is.

If you go into a game to prove yourself a winner, you cannot be a winner; at best you can only be someone who is trying to “prove,” himself a winner. Winners, losers and players are mutually exclusive; you do not have to be one to be the other.

A winner can never be a winner from need, desperation or addiction (illness) but from knowing that he is a winner in all aspects of his/her life and it comes from the most fundamental aspect of who you are, from spirit and even these aspects cannot be judged because they may be part of the strategy or process that takes one to what he desires. The game is never over until you say that it is, until you get up and walk away from the table.

Roy E. Klienwachter is a resident of British Columbia, Canada. A student of NLP, ordained minister, New Age Light Worker and Teacher. Roy has written and published five books on New Age wisdom. Roy’s books are thought provoking and designed to empower you to take responsibility for your life and what you create. His books and articles are written in the simplicity and eloquence of Zen wisdom.

You may not always agree with what he has to say. You will always come away with a new perspective and your thinking will never be the same.

Roy’s style is honest and comes straight from the heart without all the metaphorical mumble jumble and BS.

Visit Roy at: http://www.klienwachter.com

Comments Off