Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 11)

Posted on November 29, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 11)

Focusing on: Continuous Learning, Reskilling, Upskilling thyself.

Last episode of “Career change in the Greek Labor Market” series and the countdown is over.

The “vessel has left the harbor” and now all is upon, God’s hands and strange seas.

Are we over yet? No! We are not. Global Labor Markets are constantly changing, therefore Greek Labor Market is changing also. Why? There are several reasons or factors of change. Agents of change.

One of them? Technology advancements and new tools and products hitting the market. Almost every month and every day.

This rate of advancement leads to the necessity for continuous learning. Either Reskilling or Upskilling. Along with the market, one must advance also. Along with your advancement, your business is advancing also.

So, there is always room for progress, there is always something new, you always have to be on alert.

So…Let’s see how it goes…

Thank you.

IV

 

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 10)

Posted on November 29, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 10)

Focusing on: Going Live, launching to the World and Praying.

On our 10th episode of “Career change in the Greek Labor Market”, I think that there is not much to say for the Going Live phase, the “launching to the World” of one’s venture.

Launching “Go Live” phase needs mostly three things:

A) Patience, additional patience regarding patience, and a huge amount of patience.

B) Being prepared for answering lots of questions and putting out lots of fires.

C) And having Faith in God, having Faith in You, and trusting the system and the processes you have built pre-launch.

Finally, move forward and don’t look back unless it’s only for learning from mistakes.

Thank you.

IV

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 09)

Posted on November 29, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 09)

Focusing on: Revenue & Expenses, projections & bottom line P&L.

Testing. Checking the numbers and Testing. Doing the Math.All of them, needed and crucial.

You get your services or products designed and created, you get your business operating model designed and recorded.

You start considering friends, foes, network, marketing, campaigns, social media and digital presence. All is good! Yet all these must have a solid foundation of feedback and data supporting them.

One must do the math.

One must test the numbers.

One must project the costs and the expenses.

One must project the Revenues.

A budget is needed! One that leads to a Budget P&L, one that shows a bottom line result.

IF the bottom line result (on a budget basis) is a negative one, things must change! All issues need a double check and all aspects are “under attack”, everything is open to discussion and revision.

For such a process to be successful, One must know or learn all related (basic) concepts of the following:

  1. What is an Expense.
  2. What is a Cost.
  3. What is a Revenue.
  4. What the Cost of Goods Sold is (COGS).
  5. How is COGS calculated.
  6. What is a P&L (Profit and Loss statement).
  7. How is a P&L built.
  8. What is a Revenue Stream and what is a Cost Stream.

Finally, how all these are bound together, with the business model and the business processes.

Feels like a a “dinosaur”-concept , too old style to be still valid, but “bean counting” never hurt anyone! On the contrary, executed properly, It has saved lives, jobs, assets, and fortunes in the past (and keeps saving…).

Thank you so much.

IV

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 08)

Posted on November 29, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 08)

Focusing on: Building own internal operations’ workflows and processes.

On episode 07 of our series, we talked about the business operating model, one must build in order to have his professional service or company going. Central concept in that blog post was that a business model must simulate the actions of the company or the individual, that are performed, in order to serve the customers.

So…What does this mean?

Internal Processes and Workflows

At this point I can provide a very interesting statistic, that is defined by my 22+ years of business acumen & experience.

The majority of the greek companies in the Greek Economy do not have a clue of what SOP means.

No clue, of how we create an SOP or how we record business procedures and processes, and also they do not give a dime about it.

My honest opinion: regardless of the size of a company or a single person freelancing entity, having your own processes and procedures designed and recorded, has so many benefits.

Benefits of the SOPs

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) offer numerous benefits, including improved efficiency, reduced errors, and enhanced consistency by providing clear, step-by-step instructions for tasks. They also facilitate better training and onboarding, preserve organizational knowledge, and help with regulatory compliance and quality management.

Operational benefits

Increase efficiency: SOPs streamline workflows and minimize wasted time by eliminating guesswork and redundant steps.

Reduce errors: Clear, step-by-step instructions ensure tasks are performed correctly and consistently, which lowers the chance of mistakes.

Ensure consistency: They create a standardized way of performing tasks, leading to predictable and reliable outcomes for products or services.

Employee and knowledge management

Improve training: SOPs act as a training tool for new hires and a reference for experienced staff, shortening the learning curve and ensuring everyone is taught the same way.

Preserve knowledge: They document critical processes, preventing knowledge loss when employees leave the company.

Aid performance evaluation: SOPs provide a clear benchmark for evaluating how well employees are following established procedures.

Compliance and quality

Meet regulatory requirements: Documented SOPs serve as proof of adherence to industry and government standards.

Enhance quality management: They provide a framework for consistent quality control and can help in identifying and fixing process issues.

Improve safety: SOPs can include safety checklists, helping to mitigate risks and create a safer work environment.

Conclusions

Generally, there are also consequential benefits from having a written procedures framework for your business:

A) Clarity and help in the event of a need to establish a GDPR framework.

B) Clarity and help in the event of a need or obligation to build a standard reporting framework for your company.

C) Clarity and help in the event of a need or obligation to establish a Human Resources “Against Violence at Work” framework in your business, and so many more.

Thank you so much for reading.

IV

 

 

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About Self-Service BI

Posted on October 4, 2025 by admin

About Self-Service BI

As it is widely spread –  Self-service BI empowers non-technical employees to independently access, analyze, & visualize data, creating reports & dashboards without needing IT assistance, leading to faster decision-making, reduced IT bottlenecks, & greater data democratization within an organization.

It utilizes user-friendly tools, such as drag-and-drop interfaces & pre-built templates, to make data analysis accessible to business users across various departments.

How Self-Service BI Works

User-Friendly Tools:
Self-service BI platforms provide intuitive, often no-code tools that allow users to manipulate data through features like drag-and-drop interfaces, built-in connectors to data sources, and pre-built templates.

Data Preparation:
The system prepares and structures organizational data, often through data integration and transformation processes, to make it ready for analysis and consumption by business users.

Independent Exploration:
Users can explore datasets, create customized reports, and generate visualizations to gain insights relevant to their specific business needs.

Collaboration:
Users can share their findings and collaborate with colleagues, further promoting data-driven decision-making across the organization.

Key Benefits

Faster Decision-Making:
Users can get answers to their questions quickly, without waiting for IT, which speeds up the decision-making process.

Reduced IT Bottlenecks:
By enabling users to perform their own data tasks, IT departments are freed up from numerous requests, allowing them to focus on more complex projects.

Empowered Employees:
Employees gain greater autonomy and confidence in making data-informed decisions.

Data Democratization:
It makes data accessible to a wider range of employees, fostering a data-driven culture throughout the organization.

Increased Productivity:
Both technical and non-technical teams become more productive as data can be easily accessed and analyzed.

Key Components

  • Data Sources: Connections to various internal and external data sources.
  • Data Warehousing: A centralized repository for storing and managing data.
  • Visualization Tools: Software that allows users to create charts, graphs, and dashboards.
  • Data Modeling: Creating structured, user-friendly data models for analysis.

Some thoughts on the Self-Service BI concept.

01 – What about the User-Friendly tools: To be honest, according to my experience, it is quite beneficial for a company to have a self-service BI method of distributing that tech to employees and have it available, yet, there is an issue that is often disregarded.

Tech or the App may be user-friendly, but it is not tech-experience-agnostic. Which means that it is user-friendly, but not for all kinds of employees. For sure, the employees that are going to use the BI app or system, must have some kind of minimal systems and tech literacy, otherwise, self-service is not offering anything to them.

Additionally, regardless of Self-service method, all levels of users, need training and manuals (written materials) for the usage of the app, an issue very often (if not always) avoided or rejected, or forgotten.

02 – Data preparation: Data preparation is not a burden for those end-users employees that will benefit from the self-service BI app, but in the background or backstage, there are other people that are acting as the Data preparation, data cleaning, data setup, data schema designers etc, for having these data available for the self-service concept and the end – users. We must never forget this.

03 – Independent Exploration: Again I strongly believe that independent exploration can be done only by employees that have some basic expereience of the tech that they are going to use. And of course training & manuals will be handy at all times.

04 – IT Bottlenecks: last but not least, IT team that is going to be responsible for that Self-Service BI tech, will have an adequate share of the so called decreased bottleneck, since the End-users in self-service cases, A) have no cpability of solving tech issues of the app, B) have no access rights of the kind that is needed for resolving issues.

See you soon.

IV

 

Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence Applications, Dashboards, Data Cleansing, Data Mining, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Data Wrangling, DBMS, Microsoft BI, MS Power BI, SAP BI, SAP BW, Visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 07)

Posted on October 1, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 07)

Focusing on: Services / Products Offered and the Business Model.

In this series of episodes (blog-posts) some things are in order and some are not (meaning logical order). We talked in the last episode about digital presence and digital marketing and promotions.

These promotions refer to something, a product, a service, that the individual professional or company is offering.

What are those? You have to research them, define them, design them and present them accordingly.

Of course, being able to offer “what you preach” you have to build the proper business model for you.

A business model that has specific processes and procedures that simulate what you want to achieve and you exactly want to offer.

There must be a supporting concept and structure that will help you apply all actions necessary, to offer what you wish, and keep potential customers happy.

That set of processes along with other related intangible assets, create what we call a “Business Model” or Business Operating Model.

Business Models: My Experience

In my 22+ years of working experience and business acumen, I have “met” quite many theories and concepts about business modelling, yet only two (2) of them stood out in my head.

A) BMY – Business Model You (by Tim Clark)

B) The Business System Pyramid (by Robert Kiyosaki)

Let’s take a short look at them, and we will be discussing about them in future episodes also.

BMY – Business Model You (by Tim Clark)

“Business Model You” (BMY) is a one-page framework for personal career development, adapted from the business Business Model Canvas, that helps individuals visualize and understand their work life in terms of creating, delivering, and capturing value. It encourages people to treat their career like a business by mapping out their strengths, talents, and goals on a canvas, allowing for reflection, revision, and action to build a career based on interests and personality.

BMY-1-Page Method Tim Clark

How it works:

Visual Canvas:
The core of the BMY is a one-page canvas with nine key elements adapted from the Business Model Canvas.

Career as a Business:
The framework helps you see your work through the lens of a business, focusing on your value proposition, customers, resources, and costs.

Structured Reflection:
By drawing your personal business model, you can identify your key activities, the customers you serve, the value you provide, and how you earn income.

Personal Development:
The process of creating and refining your BMY allows for introspection, helping you to clarify professional goals, identify new opportunities, and improve self-awareness.

Key Benefits:

Clarity:
Provides a clear, visual understanding of your career context.

Goal Setting:
Helps in defining and aligning your professional goals with your strengths and interests.

Opportunity Identification:
Facilitates the exploration of new career paths and personal development opportunities.

Action-Oriented:
Moves beyond just reflection by guiding you to take concrete actions to build a more fulfilling career.

In essence, Business Model You offers a powerful tool for anyone looking to reinvent their career by applying structured business thinking to their personal work life.

 

The Business System Pyramid ( B-I Triangle by Robert Kiyosaki)

B-I Triangle: How To Start a Business Better

“It’s not about how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” — Robert Kiyosaki

When it comes to entrepreneurial success, few models are as insightful and practical as Robert Kiyosaki’s B-I (Business and Investor) Triangle.

The B-I Triangle is not just a theoretical framework; but also a blueprint for starting, managing, and growing a successful business.

What Do the “B” and “I” Stand for in the B-I Triangle?

In Robert Kiyosaki’s B-I Triangle, the “B” stands for “Business Owner,” and the “I” stands for “Investor.”

These terms are key components of Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant, which is a concept that categorizes the different ways individuals can generate income.

The Business Owner and Investor quadrants represent two pathways to financial independence and wealth creation:

Business Owner (B): Individuals in this quadrant create and own systems and businesses that can operate independently of their constant involvement. They focus on building enterprises where the system and other people work for them.

Investor (I): People in this quadrant allocate their money into various investments with the goal of generating passive income and achieving financial growth. Investors let their money work for them, seeking returns through vehicles like stocks, bonds, real estate, and other investment opportunities.

The BI triangle robert kiyosaki

 

The B-I Triangle and its 8 Components

Mission: At the top of the triangle, the mission is the fundamental purpose and vision of the business. It’s about what the business aims to achieve and why it exists. This is akin to setting a clear and compelling goal, providing direction and motivation.

Team: This component emphasizes the importance of having a competent and cohesive team. It’s about assembling a group of individuals with diverse skills and expertise who can work together effectively towards the business’s mission.

Leadership: Effective leadership is crucial for guiding the team and the business towards success. It involves making strategic decisions, inspiring the team, and navigating challenges.

Product: The Product component of the B-I Triangle refers to the actual goods or services that the business offers. It’s about ensuring that the products or services are high-quality, meet market needs, and provide value to customers. This involves innovation, product development, and a deep understanding of customer demands and industry trends. The success of the products directly impacts the business’s reputation, profitability, and long-term sustainability.

Legal: This aspect covers the legal structure and compliance of the business. It’s about protecting the business and ensuring it operates within the legal framework.

Systems: These are the processes and procedures that make the business run efficiently. Well-designed systems ensure consistency, quality, and scalability.

Communication: Effective communication is essential for both internal operations and external relations. It’s about clearly conveying ideas, values, and objectives within the team and to customers, investors, and other stakeholders.

Cash Flow: This is about managing the business’s finances effectively. It includes understanding and controlling where the money comes from and where it goes, ensuring the business remains financially healthy.

My personal opinion is that the two concepts above can be combined for the best possible result, though, both concepts are robust and can lead to an end result of building a minimum viable business operating model.

My best regards

IV

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Hey !!! Where is my Power User ?

Posted on September 27, 2025 by admin

Hey !!! Where is my Power User ?

What I have NOT traced in the majority of greek companies, in the greek Economy, is the concept of the Power User / or Key User.

Almost every company nowadays, regardless of size, has and uses some kind of system, smaller or bigger, and that system, could have , must have, should have a person that acts as a Key User / Power User, that can act as an “ambassador” of the system towards the company.

The Key/Power User can teach others, can solve colleagues’ problems, can communicate with the vendor support for solving tech issues and can promote the “best practices” of the system to the whole company.

That is how you can (1 method) increase the ROI of the system used in a company.

This is not happening in Greece at large. In the majority of the cases, systems are implemented, “parked” and “left” working at the basic level, with no investment made for expansion of capabilities, or increase in utilization rate of the system.

Check out the 5 characteristics that sekoia.co.uk appoints to the concept of the Power User / Key User / Super User.

How about it ? What do you think ?

My Best Regards

IV

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 06)

Posted on September 12, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 06)

Focusing on: Digital Presence, Promotions & Marketing of Offered services.

As I have written before, I support 100% the advice given by so many, that in the Age of Information, “digital presence” of a person or a company, is a MUST , if making a career change and / or find customers is the purpose.

Beginning with a simple website, serves two (2) purposes:

A) You obtain or create a “Digital presence”, a “web base” to start.

B) You practice “Done is better than Perfect”. And that is exactly because you simply don’t need the hyper-luxe website in order to start your internet presence. You can upgrade everything later, at your own pace and in your own time.

You got your website, I got my website, then? What ?

The website must “give something” offer something to people out there.

It must have content inside, either for being informative to people, or promoting the services or products that you have decided to present and offer, to you potential customers.

In the 1st case, being informative, giving solutions, or offering knowledge to people via your content, gradually builds community.

In the 2nd case of promoting services or products that you will offer, there is almost an ocean of tips, tricks, and tactics plus strategies, that have risen in the not so distant past, that made promotions campaigns and marketing, what they are today.

Of course, no single post can hold such a vast range and volume of information. It is beyond doubt that a web presence, needs to use the proper tools also for achieving the best results.

Digital Tools, digital ads, digital channels, digital gifts, digital campaigns, ALL THINGS DIGITAL!

As the Famous Steve Dotto said recently in a podcast:

  • Content engages in Conversations >
  • Conversations build Community >
  • Community triggers Conversions >
  • And Conversions are transformed to Customers >

That’s it for now. We will be back for a further analysis of those matters.

See you in the next episode – And “Good Luck Storming the Castle” (by Steve Dotto)

Best Regards

Ilias

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 05)

Posted on September 8, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 05)

Focusing on: Network of potential customers, network of friends and acquaintances.

As indicated in the phrase above, regardless if the career change, that a person is trying to achieve, is happening in the Greek Labor market or in another, Networking and acquaintances in general, remain a crucial aspect.

Indeed, most people see to their network, when the time comes for the career change or when a lay-off comes by. And it is also true, that most professionals in the HR Coaching niche, repeat again and again that “You must be in contact with your network, you must nurture your network all the time. Not only when things go sour !”.

I guess this advice is rarely followed by the majority, because when you serve a company in a specific role, you get “consumed” by that everyday working-life, and you are left with no space for proactive nurturing of your network.

People forget, they become distant, and taking care of your network is the only way to make it work for your benefit and others.

Networking – The way I see it

Obviously, the way I see networking is different from the way each person thinks about the concept.

Mostly, in terms of Networking I act the way I feel and try to be myself, act respectfully, ethically, and honestly.

There are people in a closely related “ring” of mine, and people that belong to a broader zone. Each case needs different attention, and different actions, to approach & nurture the kind of relationship that exists between you and them.

LinkedIn network of contacts, is of different caliber and quality than the network of friends, family, or locally acquainted professionals and friends. Proximity is a huge factor in the whole concept of networking.

Additionally, nurturing your network, needs certain forms of investment, that above all, is an investment in Humans and human interactions.

  • Joining social events.
  • Joining work events.
  • Going for a coffee with a colleague (ex or current).
  • Sending a “happy birthday message”, remembering birthdays!
  • Sending a thank you whenever a business opportunity comes along, and something is “boiling down”.
  • Sending a present or flowers or a small gift.
  • Making a noble gesture / or aristocratically kissing a lady’s hand (Wow! I am romantic, old-school guy!)
  • Offering a seat in the conference.
  • Buying some drinks, or dinner / lunch at a restaurant.
  • Talking via LinkedIn about mutually beneficial opportunities.
  • Informing via LinkedIn about job opportunities currently active.
  • “Sharing is Caring” etc.

Regardless of the Time or Money spent in such cases, I try to follow and use all those methods and tactics, in an honest manner. That is what I consider proper, decent networking actions from my side.

My best wishes. See you on the next one.

IV

 

 

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Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 04)

Posted on September 3, 2025 by admin

Career change in the Greek Labor Market (episode 04)

Focusing on: Personal Finances and the “Dead End” Period.

In this episode 4, we are dealing with the matter in question, as the title indicates, called, “Personal Finances and the Dead End period”.

In each case of transition, from a 9-5 employment to a Freelancing career, personal finances, stands as one of the most crucial aspects.

So, in Greece, as in most countries around the globe, a freelancer must take care of so many things related to the business, he/she is trying to build.

During this complex process, a serious effort is needed, to manage the “dead end” period as some call it. This is the period from the point of leaving the 9-5 job up to the point when the Freelance business is launched.

During this period, the personal finances of the person transitioning, are most often “headache”. There has to be “spare capital”, in the form of cash, to support several cases of expenditure, like:

  • daily purchases for the new business,
  • living expenditure,
  • investments expenditure for the new business,
  • expenditure for learning,
  • etc,

Since, the “dead end” period depends on the “speed of launching” the new freelance business, the spare capital needed for that period, respectively depends on that same “launching speed”.

The longer the time to launch, the bigger (at least on average) the spare capital available, to survive the “dead end” period.

At this point, what I would like to make clear is that there is a double purpose for the blogging of these episodes:

A) The purpose of recording the process and obstacles I am facing also as a professional trying to make a similar transition.

B) The purpose of roughly describing the basic steps towards that goal, without insisting on presenting those steps in full detail.

After all, each person takes a different or a adequately varying path towards the same goal.

Thank you for reading. See you on the next episode.

IV

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