Struggling with motivation at work happens, so how can you inspire others in your company?

Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Executive Assistant at SafeSourcing.

Regardless which industry you work, an employee’s drive can falter at times. This is a prime opportunity to lead workers toward higher aspirations and meaningful work experiences. With proper inspiration, workers tend to have higher job satisfaction and better performance. One great way to encourage the best from employees is to genuinely motivate them.

Motivational quotes, stories, and memes are a great way to encourage your team and are more than prevalent across the web, but how many actually speak to you? Below are encouraging quotes for each day of the month that may help not only with your motivation, but also to motivate those around you.

1. Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. – John Wayne
2. A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. – Henry Ford
3. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. – Napoleon Hill
4. Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
5. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs
6. People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves, they have the first secret of success. – Norman Vincent Peale
7. Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. – Henry Ford
8. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison
9. Have a very good reason for everything you do. – Laurence Olivier
10. One finds limits by pushing them. – Herbert Simon
11. Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. – Will Rogers
12. The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do. – Roy L. Smith
13. Hire character. Train skill. – Peter Schutz
14. For maximum attention, nothing beats a good mistake. – Unknown
15. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose. – Dr. Seuss
16. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin
17. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Edison
18. People are best convinced by things they themselves discover. – Ben Franklin
19. If it really was a no–brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no–brained, harebrained, and otherwise dubiously brained individuals quitting their day jobs and hanging out their own shingles. Nobody would be left to round out the workforce and execute the business plan. – Bill Rancic
20. Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch. – Tim Berners-Lee
21. When you feel like quitting, think about why you started. – Unknown
22. Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine. – Jack Ma
23. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates
24. We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in. – Arianna Huffington
25. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau
26. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. – David Brinkley
27. What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. – Oscar Wilde
28. All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. – Michael John Bobak
29. Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending. – Carl Bard
30. Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down. – Charles F. Kettering
31. If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. – Jim Rohn

The quotes above may speak to different people differently, so we would like to hear some of your favorite motivational quotes or stories. If you have any motivational trouble in your purchasing and procurement departments, or are interested in our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today

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http://epreneur.tv/motivational-business-quotes/

http://www.servendesign.com/motivational-business-quotes/

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/75-inspiring-motivational-quotes-about-success.html

Today’s post is by Michael Figueroa, Project Manager at SafeSourcing

A BHAG (pronounced bee-hag) is a statement regarding your company’s strategy that may be too extreme for an external audience, but inspiring and directional for those conducting everyday business. The term was originally coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last^[1], as a tool for achieving long term strategic goals. Used properly, a BHAG can be a powerful way to communicate the ambition of the company, and align the efforts of a team. But what make up the components of this statement?

A BHAG must be:

• Inspiring: Emotionally compelling, motivational to the team
• Attainable: Difficult enough to be audacious, but not so impossible that no one will attempt it. “Out of reach but not out of sight” as the old maxim goes.
• Company appropriate: Aligns with your mission and core competencies
• Long term: 10-30 years, or unless your organization exists to solve a certain problem within a certain timeframe.

Some examples of publicized BHAGs:

• Susan G. Komen for the Cure: A world without breast cancer.
• Amazon: Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
• Microsoft: A computer on every desk and in every home
• John F. Kennedy: Land a man on the moon by the end of this decade and return him safely

Collins and Porras also recommended that a company develop its BHAG while in its infancy rather than wait for it to reach a mature size in order to help the company stay focused in its crucial developing years. Your organization needs to be adaptive of course; however its core reason for existing should not. Throughout the life of your organization, many targets of opportunity will arise, but identifying your BHAG in your professional or personal life will help you keep on course.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

^[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built_to_Last:_Successful_Habits_of_Visionary_Companies>