I will finally be realizing my long-term career dream of heading a company of my own. My partners and I have pooled all of our resources the past couple of months to incorporate/found an upstart, Philippine IT company – TeraServe, Inc. (TSI) – with yours truly serving as its President and CEO.

We won’t be competing with the large Philippine IT companies, but will instead focus more on relatively-obscure niche markets. Hopefully, this “longtail” approach will help the company throughout the fledgling phase of its growth.

Have you ever had any lingering sore throat problems? It’s possible that your workplace environment could be the culprit.

One of the key issues a company has to tackle to help improve overall workforce health and productivity is to provide them with a workplace conducive for work. This equates to providing good work environment ergonomics and comfortable environmental working conditions.

If you work in nigh-freezing conditions then apparently, too much exposure to the super-cool air conditioning exhaust can be detrimental to your health. Even taking the proverbial “apple a day” would have been futile.

So how do you prevent sickness? It should be fairly easy. For example, it’s always a good idea to have additional pieces of clothing handy, such as jackets, in your workspace. And it wouldn’t hurt if you get out, stretch, have a hot cup of coffee or tea, or even smoke (although this can lead to a different health problem altogether) if you feel it gets too cold. But the best thing that you can probably do is to approach management and inform them of the situation. Any good employer should be able to come up with a solution, and if they don’t, then it’s a sign for you to seek employment elsewhere, since you’re probably working for the wrong people anyway.

Some companies have a Productivity Infrastructure plan that aims to improve overall employee wellbeing and productivity. It’s a testament that these companies value its employees above all else.

As discussed in some of my previous post, goal-setting can sometimes be a daunting task. Here’s a technique that I find helpful for setting goals. Always keep in mind that a good or clearly defined goal should be SMART.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Specific. A specific goal has a greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. Specific goals help us focus our efforts by clearly defining what we are going to do. For example, a general goal would be, “Maintain server uptime.” A specific goal would be, “Ensure that the mail server’s POP3 email service has 99.97% uptime per month.” It should generally be able to answer questions like: Who? What? Where? When? Which? Why?

Measurable. Here’s a helpful phrase to remember: “What you cannot measure, you cannot manage.” There should be a way to measure or determine, at any given time, if there has been any progress towards achieving the goal. On the email server POP3 service uptime example given above, you can measure its status by using a 3rd-party service monitoring and reporting tool or application.

Attainable. There should be a balance as to how achievable a certain goal has to be set. Good goals should not be impossible to attain, yet it should not be as easy as eating pie. Goals that are too far out of reach often causes a person to lose focus or commitment to achieving it. It should be able to stretch you slightly and it will need a real commitment from you. And being attainable means that the goal has yet to be achieved, and not one that has already been done. The POP3 service example given above can fit into this criteria.

Realistic. A realistic goal is means that you are sure that it can be accomplished. This means that you are willing and able to work towards achieving it. One way to determine if a goal is realistic is if you were able to accomplish something similar in the past.

Timely. Or Time-bound. A good goal generally has a timeframe in mind. Putting an endpoint gives you a clear target to work towards. A clear timeframe also encourages you to commit and not put it off at a later date.

Some people have different meanings for the SMART acronyms. R can mean Relevant, and T can mean Tangible. You can swap these meanings depending on the context of the goal that you want to achieve.