It is time to invest in your education and development. There may be a course you have been meaning to take or a conference you have wanted to attend. Do not wait any longer, as you are your most precious asset, and you should invest in yourself fully. You and your growth are all you can truly control after all....
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At my company, Celaque, we have been looking for a Human Resources system to keep a more accurate employee database of our contractors, subcontractors, and other personnel at our construction projects. We can have as many as 300 people working on a building during our peak construction months, and using spreadsheets to track this data is no longer enough.
We have been searching for the ideal tool for over a month and have explored dozens of options. However, we have found our choices to be either too expensive or too limited. Sometimes what you need does not seem to exist. In that case, the solution to the problem is not always straightforward. The following steps may be helpful.
The agony of the writer. I am not the first to write about this and certainly not the last. But alas, I will try to render my personal experiences and inspire something positive out of this profoundly uncomfortable feeling.
I’m in the middle of editing my business book, which is an exploration of what I have learned about building a business – it is, in essence, the business handbook I wish I had had when I started as an entrepreneur. I thought the writing process was going to be the hardest part, and editing the book would be a breeze. I would only have to hire a great professional, and the rest would sort itself out.
First, a disclaimer: I am not an expert at building company cultures. I have, however, experimented a lot over the span of a decade. Here are some things that have worked for us, others that haven’t, as well as other promising initiatives.
Finding the people that match your mission and values is the centerpiece of a great work culture. Every company stands for different things, and before anything, you need to know who you are. Unfortunately, if you are starting, you may not be entirely sure yet. You may have some idea, but you may not be clear of what it will look like in real life. You may have also inherited someone else’s culture, which may not match your vision of what you want to see in your company.
Habits are powerful mechanisms in our routines. They are at the core of the actions we take and therefore the results we achieve. With time, they can help you incorporate more positive actions into your day.
According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits emerged because the brain tries to save as much effort as possible to conserve energy. They are so useful to us because the brain can automate our actions into a routine. As examples, exercising, eating healthy food, cleaning our inboxes, and keeping our desks clean can become a routine so that we don’t have to think about doing them each time.
Therefore, with habits, we have room in our minds that can be used to solve non-routine problems. We also have more energy to think creatively and grow.
Constantly exploring due to curiosity about what others are doing or how to improve is a necessary precursor to any innovation. Through exploration, we can learn about our environment and about new concepts that we can apply to our companies. Relentless curiosity without an explicit agenda is necessary for sustained creativity.
Exploration does not have to be exhaustive. There are endless topics you can research around how to run companies. It is not necessary, however, to be experts at everything to create and grow a great company. Staying curious and constantly exploring to see how things can be improved, however, is.
Last year I had the immense honor of participating in the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI), a fellowship that brings together leaders from different spheres to interact and learn how to be better leaders. There are four participants from each of six Central American countries, who in most cases, have never met before. I cannot describe the magic that took place when they brought together these musicians, filmmakers, public service leaders, and entrepreneurs to discuss leadership models based on prior case studies.
The program is built to take you out of your comfort zone by having conversations about leadership as well as participating in different types of team-building activities that challenge your perceptions. CALI is a very specific type of program, and not everyone may wish to participate in something similar, but its lessons are universal: getting outside your comfort zone and looking at your life and work from an entirely new perspective can help you transform your world.
Last week, we reached the first phase of reopening. Getting there was not easy, and COVID-19 challenged us a company in a way we had never been tested in the past. The pandemic is not over, but we have returned to our buildings and are continuing construction and serving our customers. None of this would have been possible without our fantastic team. Today, I want to thank them.
We all had to juggle personal challenges with our work during our time of shelter-in-place. In a day, we had to move our work from our offices to our homes. We had to adapt with whatever we had available at home, from dining tables to children’s bedrooms, to create new office spaces where none were ever meant to go initially. I know it was not easy, especially for parents, yet everyone managed to adapt to their new physical environment and new work rhythms.
In his classic book, The Hero of a Thousand Faces (public library), Joseph Campbell describes the journey every hero takes to become just that – a hero. He traces myths from all parts of the world and shows that they all follow the same arc, which has set thresholds.
As he describes it: “The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation–initiation–return.”
“Pandemic Pivot”: I recently heard this phrase from a friend, and I loved it – it acknowledges the situation, yet it puts a positive spin on it. As I have mentioned in the past couple of weeks, COVID-19 is forcing a change. We can resist it, or we can embrace it to push us to a new direction.
A pandemic pivot can be personal, and it can also apply to our companies. How will your company need to change to leverage the changes that COVID-19 is forcing? How can we grow stronger? It is worthwhile to look at a pivot from a variety of perspectives.
The COVID-19 situation has completely altered work patterns. Regardless of how accustomed we were to a way of operating, the pandemic has forced us to change how we work. This period is a time to make sure everything we have built in our companies is carefully maintained and updated. A company is a living organism that needs to keep active. Very easily, we could regress and lose precious ground, but instead, we can maintain our company infrastructure and even improve it as we go.
A company’s organizational structure is the skeleton over which its operations are built. The configuration should be good fit between your company’s capabilities and its external environment. This structure evolves with the company, so what might have worked at one point may no longer be relevant.
I have spent the last year and a half implementing some of the ideas that Ray Dalio describes in his book, Principles: Life and Work (public library). The book holds great concepts and theories that apply to any company. I recommend spacing out the content and new implementations so that you can ensure that what you’ve rolled out in the past has been fully integrated before moving on to a new idea
One of the concepts that has had a significant impact on our company is the issue log. Dalio implemented it as a management tool in his company, Bridgewater Associates.
At my company, Celaque, we have been looking for a Human Resources system to keep a more accurate employee database of our contractors, subcontractors, and other personnel at our construction projects. We can have as many as 300 people working on a building during our peak construction months, and using spreadsheets to track this data is no longer enough.
We have been searching for the ideal tool for over a month and have explored dozens of options. However, we have found our choices to be either too expensive or too limited. Sometimes what you need does not seem to exist. In that case, the solution to the problem is not always straightforward. The following steps may be helpful.
The agony of the writer. I am not the first to write about this and certainly not the last. But alas, I will try to render my personal experiences and inspire something positive out of this profoundly uncomfortable feeling.
I’m in the middle of editing my business book, which is an exploration of what I have learned about building a business – it is, in essence, the business handbook I wish I had had when I started as an entrepreneur. I thought the writing process was going to be the hardest part, and editing the book would be a breeze. I would only have to hire a great professional, and the rest would sort itself out.
First, a disclaimer: I am not an expert at building company cultures. I have, however, experimented a lot over the span of a decade. Here are some things that have worked for us, others that haven’t, as well as other promising initiatives.
Finding the people that match your mission and values is the centerpiece of a great work culture. Every company stands for different things, and before anything, you need to know who you are. Unfortunately, if you are starting, you may not be entirely sure yet. You may have some idea, but you may not be clear of what it will look like in real life. You may have also inherited someone else’s culture, which may not match your vision of what you want to see in your company.
Habits are powerful mechanisms in our routines. They are at the core of the actions we take and therefore the results we achieve. With time, they can help you incorporate more positive actions into your day.
According to Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, habits emerged because the brain tries to save as much effort as possible to conserve energy. They are so useful to us because the brain can automate our actions into a routine. As examples, exercising, eating healthy food, cleaning our inboxes, and keeping our desks clean can become a routine so that we don’t have to think about doing them each time.
Therefore, with habits, we have room in our minds that can be used to solve non-routine problems. We also have more energy to think creatively and grow.
Constantly exploring due to curiosity about what others are doing or how to improve is a necessary precursor to any innovation. Through exploration, we can learn about our environment and about new concepts that we can apply to our companies. Relentless curiosity without an explicit agenda is necessary for sustained creativity.
Exploration does not have to be exhaustive. There are endless topics you can research around how to run companies. It is not necessary, however, to be experts at everything to create and grow a great company. Staying curious and constantly exploring to see how things can be improved, however, is.
Last year I had the immense honor of participating in the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI), a fellowship that brings together leaders from different spheres to interact and learn how to be better leaders. There are four participants from each of six Central American countries, who in most cases, have never met before. I cannot describe the magic that took place when they brought together these musicians, filmmakers, public service leaders, and entrepreneurs to discuss leadership models based on prior case studies.
The program is built to take you out of your comfort zone by having conversations about leadership as well as participating in different types of team-building activities that challenge your perceptions. CALI is a very specific type of program, and not everyone may wish to participate in something similar, but its lessons are universal: getting outside your comfort zone and looking at your life and work from an entirely new perspective can help you transform your world.
Last week, we reached the first phase of reopening. Getting there was not easy, and COVID-19 challenged us a company in a way we had never been tested in the past. The pandemic is not over, but we have returned to our buildings and are continuing construction and serving our customers. None of this would have been possible without our fantastic team. Today, I want to thank them.
We all had to juggle personal challenges with our work during our time of shelter-in-place. In a day, we had to move our work from our offices to our homes. We had to adapt with whatever we had available at home, from dining tables to children’s bedrooms, to create new office spaces where none were ever meant to go initially. I know it was not easy, especially for parents, yet everyone managed to adapt to their new physical environment and new work rhythms.
In his classic book, The Hero of a Thousand Faces (public library), Joseph Campbell describes the journey every hero takes to become just that – a hero. He traces myths from all parts of the world and shows that they all follow the same arc, which has set thresholds.
As he describes it: “The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation–initiation–return.”
“Pandemic Pivot”: I recently heard this phrase from a friend, and I loved it – it acknowledges the situation, yet it puts a positive spin on it. As I have mentioned in the past couple of weeks, COVID-19 is forcing a change. We can resist it, or we can embrace it to push us to a new direction.
A pandemic pivot can be personal, and it can also apply to our companies. How will your company need to change to leverage the changes that COVID-19 is forcing? How can we grow stronger? It is worthwhile to look at a pivot from a variety of perspectives.
Pamela Ayuso is an author and the co-founder and CEO of Celaque. She is a real estate entrepreneur and developer who has executive leadership experience in two of the most successful real estate developers in Honduras — managing operations at Alianza and leading Celaque. Celaque develops office and residential buildings and manages a broad portfolio of properties. Pamela’s focus is on growing Celaque into a model for the 21st-century company.
In addition to her role as CEO at Celaque, Pamela is a writer that offers practical business and personal development insights for other entrepreneurs and business leaders on her blog and LinkedIn. She published her first children’s book in 2019, Alicia and Bunnie Paint a Mural.
Join our mailing list and receive our free Time Management for Busy Business Owners e-book.
Pamela Ayuso will use the information on this form to be in touch with you and provide updates. You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at pamela@pamelaayuso.com. We will treat your information with respect. We use cookies and similar technologies to run this website and help us understand how you use it. For more information, read our Privacy Policy.
Pamela Ayuso is an author and the co-founder and CEO of Celaque. She is a real estate entrepreneur and developer who has executive leadership experience in two of the most successful real estate developers in Honduras — managing operations at Alianza and leading Celaque. Celaque develops office and residential buildings and manages a broad portfolio of properties. Pamela’s focus is on growing Celaque into a model for the 21st-century company.
In addition to her role as CEO at Celaque, Pamela is a writer that offers practical business and personal development insights for other entrepreneurs and business leaders on her blog and LinkedIn. She published her first children’s book in 2019, Alicia and Bunnie Paint a Mural.
Pamela Ayuso is an author and the co-founder and CEO of Celaque. She is a real estate entrepreneur and developer who has executive leadership experience in two of the most successful real estate developers in Honduras — managing operations at Alianza and leading Celaque. Celaque develops office and residential buildings and manages a broad portfolio of properties. Pamela’s focus is on growing Celaque into a model for the 21st-century company.
In addition to her role as CEO at Celaque, Pamela is the author of Amazon best-selling book, Heptagram: The 7-Pillar Business Design System for the 21st Century. She offers practical business and personal development insights for other entrepreneurs and business leaders on her blog and LinkedIn. Her husband and her three wonderful daughters inspired the story of her first children’s book, Alicia and Bunnie Paint a Mural.
Join our mailing list and receive our free Time Management for Busy Business Owners e-book.
Pamela Ayuso will use the information on this form to be in touch with you and provide updates. You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at contact@pamelaayuso.com. We will treat your information with respect. We use cookies and similar technologies to run this website and help us understand how you use it. For more information, read our Privacy Policy.
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