The Next Time I see You

 In late November 2022, I released my first album, "Amazing Journey" which I coproduced with Ethan Foxx and masterfully engineered by Jimmy "CAT" Caterine. There are a couple of songs that have leaped out as popular. To that end, we created a lyric video for "The Next Time I See You." This song is about reuniting with loved ones once we leave this blue marble. Click here for the Video

What Others Have Said About "The Next Time I See You"

Strings! Love it.  David McCoy, Former DJ, and Retired Digital Consultant, Atlanta Georgia

I enjoyed the vocal on this on this most “melodious” song on the disc, in my opinion.

Bill Martin, Retired Color Master, and Artist

Click Here For an Album Sampler

Click Here For the Album on YouTube

2023 Top 5 Business Trends

It’s a new world for 2023, with managers facing new challenges and managing traditional business issues. While the recent large wave of the ever-evolving disease seems to have passed, there are threats of resurgence and new strains. There are implications of war and regional conflicts on the horizon that could also impact businesses. The era of "free money" is now behind us all, while currencies seem to be adjusting to a tight capital plus uncertainty in most traditional and untraditional currencies. Investors, businesses, and customers will be much more careful in the future, implying an economic pull-back and more conservative investment. Even so, innovation will still be necessary to navigate through rather than being primarily aimed at "moonshots." What does this mean for business trends?

Managing Uncertainty

You can't manage what you can't see or measure. So organizations will double down on managing uncertainty. It means that on the reactionary front, businesses will focus on speed to respond with innovation, change, and faster digital technologies to assist management in observing, orienting, deciding, and acting. Proactively, businesses will bolster their corporate planning exercises to consider scenarios and use new applications of digital sentinels to sense emergent threats, opportunities, and unanticipated "black swan" events or event clusters. AI will likely play a more vital role beyond just operational machine learning.

Wrestling with the Cost of Doing Business

Businesses will try to lower costs on core operations without putting the burden on the backs of their employees, partners, and customers. It implies more intelligent automation and not just outsourcing costs to partners, making customers the data entry clerks, or putting more stress on employees. Capital expenditures will typically be observed as they progress to profitable results and in all tight money times. However, care must be taken not to use cost containment to choke off important innovation. The most intelligent organizations invest during down cycles to get momentum on the other side of a downturn.

Increasing Loyalty for Real

Clearly, businesses have taken customers and employees for granted in the past, and it is coming home to roost. Companies must be flexible with work models to stay competitive and offer upskilling opportunities, tailored benefits, and intelligent automation assistance for the higher-skilled workers who know the game is about skills. In addition, brand reputation will get technical assistance in measuring real-time customer satisfaction through voice, more intelligent natural language chatbots, and better interactions that are not only driven by rehearsed scripts.

Wrestling Change Through Focused Adaptability

Businesses have a hard time with change. Sometimes it’s the inflexibility of core processes and systems. Still, more than that, it keeps people engaged with the change so that they can contribute towards goals and have the change feedback on the progress of the resulting changes as they roll out. Technology systems need to be fitted and surrounded by flexible and fast digital technologies, and people need to be engaged frequently.

Focusing on Core Business Needs

Businesses should focus on core businesses and shed those activities that do not contribute to the core business unless it is an innovation that would distance your organization from future economic up cycles. Concentrating on the core will be essential to weather any storms that emerge. As a result, staff evaluations, technology redundancies, and vendor consolidation should be on the table in 2023. In addition, new methods for managing non-core activities will be aggressively pursued.

Net; Net:

While rapid growth is not expected in the economy, organizations will take bold steps to intercept and manage changing conditions. Organizations that leverage emergent management disciplines and technologies will be far ahead of those organizations that just play speed to reaction well. Any efforts to be on top of real-time observations, pattern interception, and critical actions will be paid back handsomely when conditions are emergent, as I expect going forward.

Art for the 4th Quarter 2022

 Inspiration continues on the traditional art front with a new piece entitled "Ready or Not". It is a painting in acrylic using some metallic effects. The other two are interesting fractals. If you want to purchase these or others on my art site, please contact me at jim.sinur@gmail.com. Enjoy!

                                                     SWIRLS

                                                   BRILLIANT SQUID

  

                                                     READY OR NOT

Significant Activity Over the Last Decade

First of all, thank you to those who took the time to read my thoughts on my blog over nearly a decade. It started out as a fun outlet for expressing my ideas on hot topics and ended up helping many. I am writing this now because the number of hits surpassed 800K inception to date this month. This number might be a little inflated because some actors try to sneak pointers to their content, but I deleted 99% of the invader's thanks to hints from Google. I did use this platform to share my art and music creations, but these posts were not bellringers. I thought it might be good to share the "Greatest Hits" with you. There weren't a lot of surprises for me as I watched trends over time. Other than the US and Russia, Europe dominated the number of hits. All comments will be appreciated, especially topics that you feel would be helpful in the future.  

Net; Net:

I sure have enjoyed writing for you, but I delight in feedback. Please reach out by commenting or sending me a message through Linkedin or Twitter. 

Art Award Lands Nicely

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

James Sinur's Art Recognized 

James Sinur Receives 2022 Best of Glendale Award 

Glendale Award Program Honors the Achievement

GLENDALE November 14, 2022 -- James Sinur has been selected for 2022 Best of 

Glendale Award in the Artist category by the Glendale Award Program.

Each year, the Glendale Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved 

exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are 

local companies that enhance the positive image of small businesses through service to their 

customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Glendale area a 

great place to live, work, and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each 

category. The 2022 Glendale Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are 

determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Glendale Award 

Program and data provided by third parties.

About Glendale Award Program

The Glendale Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and 

accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Glendale area. Recognition is given to 

those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented 

programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Glendale Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our 

community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, 

professional associations, and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission 

is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: Glendale Award Program

Amazing Journey Album is Now Streaming

 Announcing “Amazing Journey” by the Foxx and Sinur Label is Now Streaming

Everybody has a life journey to experience. This collection of songs takes you down a journey of the search for fulfillment and love. While each song stands alone with unique style and message, together they create a journey for the listener that will evoke various emotions while delighting your ear, engaging your mind, and hopefully moving your soul. Amazing Journey is streaming on all major streaming services. Please try your favorite streaming service. If you don’t have access to a service, there is a CD available.  Click here for a Sample of Amazing Journey

What Others are Saying About Amazing Journey

Amazing Journey is an eclectic mix of many musical styles. The songs take you on a well-crafted emotional journey. Top notch musicianship along with the heartfelt vocals and lyrics make this a very enjoyable project indeed!

Greg Chaisson, Manager of Bizarre Guitar plus bass guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer of Atomic Kings and Badlands, Phoenix, AZ

I really like how this turned out; there are so many different styles at play and it works! The production/mix is tight. Siren’s Song is my favorite, but there’s so much to love here! You should be proud of this CD! I’m impressed!

David McCoy, Former DJ and Digital Consultant, Atlanta Georgia

“Having grown up on theme albums, I miss them with new albums having just a number of songs. Jim and Ethan have put together an album on the themes of life and love. I found myself drawn to the deep experiences in my own life as they came back to life in this album. Highly recommend this exploration”

Craig Hayenga, Retired NASA Scientist, Phoenix, AZ

Winning Change Management Delivers

It matters not what kind of situation organizations find themselves in; change is always present. Change often implies an organizational and individual risk that creates angst. These facts alone should drive organizations to be great at change, but unfortunately, they generally are not. In today's world, it seems like stability is even more elusive, with change and potential change hovering around every corner. Therefore, it puts a premium, making change management a core business capability. What should organizations do to improve the change process to survive, thrive, and capitalize on change? There are three things that I would point to that are enumerated below:

Continuous Alignment on Goals:

Change is no longer a project with a defined start and end. Instead, it is continuous and accelerating. Because of the agility needed in the world today, there is a significant need to keep teams focused on their goals and any change or refinement of those goals. It means that the goals become a first-class visibility object in the change process. Because alignment is crucial because the change cycle will likely be split into many pieces, all progressing while changing the interactions of several advancing teams. There are two key enablers to making this happen. One is a shared repository of goals and all the supporting content for all to see. The other is a strong collaboration and communication capability to keep everyone abreast of progress when goals are stable and changes if the goals shift.

Focus on Watching the Change:

In an emergent world, change management must provide Just-in-time feedback to all recipients in a synchronized fashion, so all can act on it appropriately. Change sponsors often only look at the emergent change's operational and tactical results. It is a significant miscalculation. Sponsors need to be laser-focused on the actual change process itself. This way, the results will align with expectations, but more importantly, drift can be detected early to adjust during the change process. The sponsors will lead the way to the teams keeping a sharp eye on the progress of the change management process.

Upscale Team Change Skills:

Because of the increased frequency of the multitude of sources of and impact of today's change, organizations had better make change management a core competency. In some instances, this will become a survival skill, whereas, in other circumstances, it will be a necessary part of a game plan to win. As we all know, people are the key to change, and they have an emotional tie to the changes. While they might like the vision, some folks fear the change. Here, empathy is crucial in keeping leaders and team members on an even keel. In addition, clear visibility and effective communication are necessary without all the overhead of meetings.

Net; Net:

Change management is crucial for organizations to succeed and drive outcomes. It is common knowledge that study after study points to a 70% change failure rate. On the horizon, all organizations are seeing more change coming. We are at a critical juncture to "Get Great at Change" or else. The convergence of more change than ever and being poor at it paints a grim picture. Change management has risen to the top processes to get great at. You can't just hire a consultant that works with your executives and declare change; you must get much better at the change management process to make changes effective. It should become a core competency.

Additional Readings:


There is one organization that gets it and helps you grow competency in change management that doesn’t take a vacuum cleaner to your pocketbook. Here is a pointer to some of their writings

Change Itself is Changing

Don't Stop Believing in Change

Big Change is Enabled by Cared For People