Category: lifestyle
Holiday Office Party at Lakes Business Group
Our office is having our annual holiday office party next week. Although, we haven’t really ‘decked the halls’ in our office, we do enjoy planning a party with good food, since our team appreciates good food. The holiday party is a time for our team to get together in a more casual setting where we have a gift exchange planned. Finding the right gift takes time, so we’ve had our party on the calendar over a month ago. Our gift exchange is not quite a white elephant, although we use the ‘rules’ for white elephant. Everyone gets a number and start with number 1. When your number is up, you can pick a wrapped gift or steal a gift that’s already been opened, and the person who has their gift stolen, gets to open a new gift. This continues until we get to the last number and the gift you are left with is yours.
Our December holiday party also has a brief time of looking back at the year to 
see what we have achieved and also to look at our failures and see what changes to make for a better year in 2018. We give accolades to those who have had a good sales year and encourage all to have goals for the coming year.
Whatever your office or work place does for this time of year, we hope you have time to relax and to reflect on the past year and look forward to 2018. Happy Holidays!
Doing Business in 2018
Knowing the trends helps us to prepare as we continue to grow our business so that when it’s time to sell, the business is still relevant. What are some of the trends for the coming year? Following are a couple of 2018 business trends that have been coming up in articles the past year.
1- the Experience economy: With the Millennials having more say in our economy with their spending dollars, businesses are catering to them. They want to experience an emotional connection. They are looking for organizations that speak to their reason and their emotions. They are looking for organizations with shared values. One of the examples is the State Street’s Fearless Girl statue. State Street Corporation, the $2.6 trillion asset manager, installed the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street, agreed to settle US allegations that it discriminated against hundreds of female executives by paying them less than their male colleagues. “State Street is committed to equal pay practices and evaluates on an ongoing basis our internal processes to be sure our compensation, hiring and promotions programs are nondiscriminatory,” the company told Bloomberg.com.
As you look for goals for 2018, your business must find ways to be honest and transparent. Find ways to speak to the emotions and reason in your marketing – tell a story. One example of a 2017 television ad is the Audi commercial titled ‘Daughter‘ and the NFL commercial titled ‘Inside These Lines‘. Both of these ads tell a story through the images and the narrator that connect on an emotional level
2- Creating Shared Value. This is a trend that has been talked about the past few years. Creating shared value is the practice of creating economic value in a way that creates value for society by addressing its needs. An article written in October 2016 referred to this new era as Shared Values Economy. One of the examples is how businesses are partnering with non-profits; In 2015, the Starbucks Foundation assisted at least 5,000 smallholder Tanzanian coffee farmers and their families. In 2016 Whirlpool company partnered with Habitat for Humanity to provide washer and dryers for the homes built.
This article has highlighted just a couple of the trends that have changed in the past few years. There are many articles written on 2018 business trends. Below are links to three of them.
Article on workzone.com written in November 2017
Forbes article posted today
Article written in November 2017