Impact Impression Blog

In a world so cramped with lots of struggles and competition, it is safe to assert that it is only those who manage to stay fit and sane that survive; hence, the epiphany - The survival of the fittest. Fitness does not just mean muscles and weights. It also means skills, practicable skills. If you are not productive, you fade out. It's that simple. While acquiring formal education in school, we were given the similitude of survival skills to which is expected we apply in real world, which in turn will deliver at least our basic needs - food, shelter and clothing. It worked then. But now you need more than school grades to actually get even the basic need. The basic skills learnt in traditional  schools today is no longer enough. Hence, the Bow and Brain strategy. The education, which is hoped to have inculcated a skill, is your Bow, i.e., your weapon. This is what conventional education gives you. But specialized education gives you a renewed creative mind, which is ter...

Do you know that there's a  huge  difference between  living  and  just  existing ? Everyone that is born into this planet will have a space in the  earth's  history book. This space records that you existed on this planet at a certain time. That's all. But when it comes to living, your works, while you exist, are recorded on marble. This marble is the hearts of men that will live generations after you. Unfortunately, a great percentage of the human race are just existing and not living. When you ask most young males what (and where) they want to be in the future, most already have default answers. It is what they refer to as the perfect plan - that is, if all things are equal. Unfortunately, all things are never equal. Their responses usually go thus: I will have my masters at 23 (or 25). I will get a good job in a bank or oil company (the course studied is not even put into consideration). I will own 3 cars and have a sizable amount in ...

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high school by telling them the difference they each made. Using a process developed by Helice Bridges of Del Mar, California, she called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First she told them how the student made a difference to her and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters which read, "Who I Am Makes a Difference." Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a week One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his sh...

Most people do their best work when they know their manager trusts them. If they worry that you think they’re lazy, incapable of directing their behavior, or lack integrity, they’re unlikely to take feedback or coaching from you. So go out of your way to gain your employees’ trust by demonstrating positive assumptions about them. Give challenging assignments, with the clear and confident belief that your expectations will be met. And don’t hide information, or assume people will mishandle it. Instead, promote transparency. Try adding a “through the grapevine” agenda item to meetings as a fun, informal way for people to share company information they’ve heard, so you can either confirm or debunk the rumor. When managers demonstrate positive assumptions, employees respond in kind. [HBR]

Making other people better at something requires more effort than we need to make ourselves better at the same thing. In other words, it is much easier to tell somebody what they should do if they can see we have done the same thing ourselves. Our lives say much more than our mouths can ever articulate. How we talk to people, how we react to situations, in whom we put our faith, how promptly and genuinely we care about other people, and a host of other life matrices combine to give us away quicker than we are ready to defend ourselves. So, the work starts with us. We are better placed to suggest strategies to other people only if we have applied such strategies--or similar ones--to our lives, and we are currently prospering as a result of that. It is easier for people to believe what has previously worked for someone else. This explains why big organisations spend a lot of money inviting successful people to talk to their members of staff. People with success stories tend to...

The way we do our payment is changing dramatically. For example, people are beginning to use their smartphones for every kind of formal and informal transaction - to shop at stores, buy songs and movies online, and even do their banking. At the heart of these changes in how we do our transactions are lots of companies competing and collaborating to facilitate transactions. Although a great percentage of people use digital forms of payment, very few fully understand that it is an extremely complex industry. Payments is transferring information from one party to another, and nearly every stakeholder in the industry benefits when that process runs on digital rails. This is the era that we are in. Do you see any business opportunity? If everything is moving towards online, there must be something you can do (service or business) to be part of this moving train. Think.

In her last address as the United States Of America's first lady, Michelle Obama kept reiterating the need for good education. In all her speeches to the young people, she never descended the podium without telling them the importance of good  and sound  education. I can't forget her last speech where she said that with good education, you can aspire to be anything in the world, even the President of the USA.  This touched me. In my school days, my lecturers, in their bid to encourage (and threaten) us to study beyond the school syllables, always told us that the school can only give us 30% of the education we need. The remaining 70%, we have to get ourselves through ardent reading, studying, researches, observing and of course, experience.