South Africa's bad traffic wins bronze medal

While driving to work yesterday (and being stuck in traffic as usual), I heard the most interesting story on the radio. Traffic jams in Johannesburg are as common as giving birth, okay maybe a bit extreme, but I’m sure a lot of people would agree. Joburgers have been desensitised when it comes to the traffic issue we face. 

In comparison to the major cities in the world, Johannesburg is relatively small. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that Johannesburg got voted 3^rd worst city to drive in, in the WORLD in a recent poll. At first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That moment didn’t last very long, as I was brought back to reality quite soon; I realised I was stuck in traffic. It all started to make sense though. We are living in one of the most dynamic cities in South Africa and possibly the world. So it is only natural that Johannesburg will be a buzz of people chasing after their own little piece of gold.

Oh, but back to the poll.

Here’s the nitty gritty. IBM did a study recently to determine which city is the worst to drive in. They interviewed over 8000 motorists in over 20 cities around the world.

This graph indicates what the rankings are like. And in black and white, clearly you can see that Johannesburg walked away with the bronze medal in the Olympics of bad traffic.  With Beijing’s population nearing 20 million, Mexico City’s population is 20,45 million and  Johannesburg does not even tip the scale, weighing in at 3.2 million . This is actually untrue then, with the population of Johannesburg not nearing as much as Beijing or Mexico City, shouldn’t we be 1^st then?  I wonder if IBM would re do this poll if they heard my reasoning?  To me this seems very far- fetched, but thinking about it clearly this can be true. Take yourself for instance, how many times a week do you get stuck in traffic? From personal experience, I get stuck in traffic 5 times a week, every day I drive to work that is.

 I still have to meet a person that can stay happy and motivated after a bad traffic experience. This made me think how bad traffic puts you in a bad mood and can actually mess up your whole day after that. Surely this can also affect your work performance. In this fast paced world where deadlines and performance are at the order of the day, can we really afford to let a bad mood affect our work performance?  It might be a trivial thing, but apparently is it a big deal. Of course is it a big deal, I hate coming into contact with people who looks miserable and who are clearly in a bad mood.

Luckily is a bad mood easy to rid of. According to doctors, the easiest way to get rid of a bad mood is to exercise. It is not really that easy to do when you are sitting in your car, so what I do is blast my radio at full volume and sometimes I sing along to a song or two. Probably the best advice to handle a bad mood is to embrace it. What this means is to acknowledge that fact that you have bad mood. This will allow you to think about it clearly and to focus your mind on the important things in life.

Let’s try this people, next time you are in a bad mood and stuck in traffic, get out of your car and run a few laps around it. Or run around your desk for a few minutes. You might get a few strange looks from your colleagues, but at least you will make them smile, which in turn would lift their bad mood and prevent frown lines.

K2 and Accpac integration: something big

I can’t imagine a better or more exciting feeling as the one you get when you know something big is about  to happen. Remember how we used to get the day before Christmas?  No one ever wanted to go to sleep. We were just too excited for the next day. 

When it comes to the business world, we rarely get that excited, until now. That something big is here. K2 and Sage ERP Accpac recently integrated, ensuring business solutions to pave the way for the future.

The Accpac Enterprise Resource Planning suite provides the freedom of choice of seamless integration, high performance and reliability in the financial, operational and managerial divisions of your business.

K2 is a process driven application. This provides simple processes for people of technical and non-technical backgrounds. K2 serves as a helpline to pull together processes into a single, easy to use application. K2 gets rid of complex traditional software and replacing them with easy to use visual tools.

With these two prominent leaders in the business process management and ERP fields, the future of business solutions and process driven applications is looking bright and definitely something to keep your eye on.

Synergy Group (Pty) Ltd is very proud of this integration and to celebrate this, Synergy, together with K2 will be hosting a demonstration breakfast on 7 May 2012.

Want more information? Leave a comment.

The single most important thing in business – agility.

When I as a youngster at school I used to admire all the sports men and women. Seeing that I was not a great sportsman myself, it was a treat to see how these men and woman would push their bodies’ to the limits.

When I grew older I found my one and only love; horse riding. Horse riding, in the end was the sport that pushed my body and mind to its limits. Only then did I realise what agility meant and how to build on this. Agility would manifest in different shapes and forms, throughout my life in various aspects.

The term agility gets used in conversations across the world and in different languages. Some may think that agility is only used to describe success and standing out from the crowd. As much as this is true, do I also believe that agility is the way you pick yourself up from a fall, handling criticism or even dealing with disappointment?

I always wondered how great business-men and women with major companies do it. I mean, how do they deal with stress or criticism? If you look at it, they are at the helm of companies that sometimes deal with millions, if not billions of Rands.  How do they deal with the responsibilities that come with this and all the people in the company that depend on them to make the right decisions?

As in life, also in the business world do you get constant competition for your company or product to be the best. Let’s face it, no one ever truly enjoys coming second. That is why constant competition keeps them striving for more, always bigger and better. This is where agility comes in. That special thing that allows you to bounce back, make critical decisions in a matter of seconds and to think ahead.

To think ahead in the business world means  that a business should keep up with trends and make sure that they have the right people in place to help and assist in making the right choices. This can also be seen as resources that should be in place. Is it safe to say that resources can be seen as agile?

If this can be explained to a business owner I’m positive that they would agree. The most important part of a business is the people, the service and other resources.  And the key to a successful company is the ability of all its resources to grow with change – aka, agility.

What a business owner will need to look out for in his business is to implement systems that will insure growth and improve agility. Ask any business owner what defines the success of a business and the answer is almost always the same. To be ahead of their competitors is almost second nature to them. Being ahead in your line of business gives you space to develop your niche market and to be seen as the leader in that specific field.

As I mentioned earlier your resources should be the driving force behind your company.  When proper resources are in place is it easy for businesses to make promises, because they are more than prepared to follow through on those promises. Promises are the fundamentals of building strong and lasting relationships with your customers.

The great thing is that all of us, in our own special way possess agility.