When we're selling to business people, our value proposition has to show a good return. Solid, credible Return On Investment (ROI) calculations are supposed to prove this for us. But if we don't think twice, calculating ROI can sabotage our sale. Lots has been written about various ROI methods -- return on assets, net present value, months to break even -- and I'm not knocking any of them here. Use the one that serves your customer and your purposes best. Create the financial model that shows y More..

Hiring Great People And How to Be One Yourself: Five Secrets

Bad news. Your senior vice-president, your marketing director or your accounting department head has decided to retire, move to Okinawa or start his own business??and you're left staring, horrified, at a polite letter of resignation. The timing couldn't be worse. You've now got a vacancy to fill, and you need to do it...well, yesterday. Is there any ray of hope? There is. But first, let's get one important fact out of the way: No one truly enjoys the hiring process, no matter how favorable the More..

Problem-Solving Success Tip: Test Your Assumptions About Everything

Test your assumptions about everything. Assumptions have a way of creeping into all parts of a problem-solving project. They're often wrong, which can lead to a lot of wasted effort and even cause a problem-solving project to fail entirely. It's very easy to take a strongly stated assertion as true, especially if it's the boss who makes it. Remind everyone involved to be skeptical and on the watch for untested assumptions. Problem definition. Check the facts first to be sure that you and your More..

Problem-Solving Success Tip: Measure

Measure. The first key question to answer in starting a problem-solving project is, "How will you know when the problem is solved?" Answer this question in measurable terms before you start trying to solve the problem. As you begin defining your problem, these success metrics help set clear expectations about what will be different when you finish. At the end of the project, the measurements will demonstrate that the difference has been achieved, i.e., the problem has been solved. To be useful More..

Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 1, How to Plan a Teleconference

Teleconferences can be a boon or a bust. On the positive side, they allow people atdifferent locations to attend meetings without having to travel. On the negative side,they can degenerate into frustrating struggles with uncontrolled babble. This occursbecause people lack visual contact, which hinders effective communication andprovides opportunities to misbehave. Here's how to set up an effective meeting by phone. 1) Plan a simple meeting. Ideally, the meeting should last less than 30 to 45mi More..

Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 2, How to Hold a Teleconference

Even a well-planned teleconference can go poorly. Some people treat any meetingas a casual social activity instead of as a serious business project. And ateleconference brings special challenges because people attend them in the privacyof their office without being able to see or be seen by the other participants. Use these techniques to hold a more effective meeting by phone. 1) Begin with a quick round of self introductions so that everyone can find out whois present and hear everyone else' More..

Cheat Sheet; Understanding The MSDS and Your Obligations In The Workplace To Employees

MSDS SHEETS MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheets. MSDS sheets contain nine sections. These sections are: I. General Information II. Ingredients III. Physical Data IV. Fire and Explosion Hazard Data V. Health Hazard Information VI. Reactivity Data VII. Spill, Leak and Disposal Procedures VIII. Special Handling Information IX. User's Responsibility At the top of each sheet is a square on end. It looks like a diamond shape. It is broken into four squares inside this diam More..

Small Business Checking Accounts

ACCOUNTING AND BILLING CHECK BOOKS We recommend that you maintain a business checking account in addition to a small business credit card merchant account so that you can take credit cards from purchasers. This way you will know exactly how much is going into your merchant account and how much of your volume percentage is being done through credit card usage. You should shoot for 50-60% credit card sales and debit cards. If you are an owner/operator, you may not be as concerned with this numbe More..

Preventative Maintenance of Company Delivery Vehicles

If you have company delivery vehicles at your small or medium sized business you should have a preventative maintenance schedule and procedures for employees who are drivers of these vehicles. When discussing preventative maintenance over the years with business owners the first thing which comes to mind is 'Oil change' and usually the business owner who is on the hook for the loans on these vehicles is more than aware of that fact. Yes, you should change the oil. Obviously you should. How about More..

Gift Giving for Business a Major Headache

Corporate gifting is a big headache for most business owners; how much to spend, who to spend the money on, where to get the gifts, what to get and how to gauge the effect of that giving in terms of benefits for the company are all important questions. When a company decides to give gifts it needs to be planned out as part of doing business, not just a last minute impulse. The cost of gifting should be built in to the cost of your product and used when evaluating your break even point. With a p More..

How to Create an Operations Manual

An operations manual can act as a tool for training employees and empowers them to your business running smoothly when you are out of the office. Though it may seem like a lot of work, the effort put into your operations manual can save you money that could otherwise be wasted on mishandled procedures and employee training time. Every operations manual is different so yours should be tailored to your specific business needs. You may want to create separate manuals for each department or job des More..

Terrible Meetings - Ten Ways to Spot Them!

Sometimes, better than giving advice about how to run things well, it can be useful to have a hit list to notice to help you identify when things are less than productive. Meetings can be hugely productive, especially if you keep a sharp eye out for these Ten things:- No AgendaWhen there is no agenda, there is no opportunity to prepare, no framework for the meeting and no purpose. When this happens a lot, there is a tendency for 5 below. Wrong people thereEver been to a meeting where there was More..

10 Steps Towards A Stress-Free Introduction Into Management

Becoming a manager for the first time can be an unnerving and sometimes stressful experience. In many cases, organisations expect you to immediately jump into the role and begin to perform as if you have been there for years. Also, you may have been promoted "out of the blue" and as such have not taken part in any "succession planning" that would have prepared you for the management role. If you follow the ten steps outlined then you will put yourself in a much better position to develop into y More..

Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk: Part 1

Leaders speak 15 to 20 times daily. You speak at meetings, you speak across their desks, you speak on the phone, you speak in e-mails, you speak at lunch, beside the water cooler, and on elevators, etc. It's in the interaction of those speaking encounters, multiplied daily, month in and month out, year in and year out, that you become a successful leader or not. If those encounters are defined by Leadership Talks instead of presentations/speeches, the effectiveness of your leadership will be d More..

Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk: Part 2

In Part One, I described the Leadership Talk and how it is a much more effective leadership tool than presentations or speeches. I also described two fundamental premises that the Leadership Talk is based on. In Part Two, I will show you the purpose of the Leadership Talk. You won't be able to give a Leadership Talk effectively on a consistent basis if you misunderstand its purpose. The Leadership Talk doesn't drive purpose. Purpose drives the Leadership Talk. There is one and only one purpos More..

Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk Part 3

To develop and deliver a great Leadership Talk, you must understand that every Talk has three important parts. (1) Audience Needs. (2) Strong Belief. (3) Action. (1) Audience needs: The first step in putting together a Leadership Talk is to understand the needs of your audience. As I explained in Part Two, they cannot be ordered to be your cause leaders. Their commitment is one of free choice. They will not make that choice unless they believe that their being your cause leaders will in some wa More..

2 Steps For Increasing Company Profits or Performing Business Turnarounds

1. Eliminate waste Eliminate reports, habits, products, duplicate input, and processes that waste time and money. These drain labor, money and energy from the business. Two-thirds of products or services sold incur more costs to produce than they are sold for. These are a drain on profits. These losers can be reduced by either increasing prices, reducing direct costs incurred in producing the product or service, reducing overhead costs allocated to the products or services, or discontinuance o More..

Avoiding The Sheep Dip

It is a sad fact that many employees are still being subjected to the age old training ritual of "sheep dipping". This is a process by which employees are "refreshed", "cleansed" and "re-invigorated" by ensuring they attend set training courses or, perhaps, are placed on the ubiquitous "refresher" course. This refresher course is, of course, necessary, because most employees forget what they have learned on similar courses that they had been previously on. Do they? Companies just love "the shee More..

Read more About Change Management

The 20/60/20 Rule Of Leadership. Dont Go Solving The Wrong Problems

Several decades ago, a passenger jet approached a Florida airport with the pilot and co-pilot struggling to fix what they thought was a malfunctioning landing gear. The landing-gear light was on, signaling that the gear was deployed; but both men did not hear it actually deploy. As the men sought to understand whether they had a defective landing-gear light or a defective landing gear -- the co-pilot actually taking up a hatch and getting down into the wheel well -- the aircraft kept losing alt More..

Using Employee Opinions Effectively When Designing HR Programs

Using Employee Opinions Effectively When Designing HR Programs Employee opinion is one of the most powerful resources available to human resource professionals. But what are the best methods for harnessing those opinions? Conversation - Welcoming feedback via informal conversation is the first step towards utilizing the viewpoints of employees. Focus Groups - Focus groups take conversation to the next level by brainstorming on particular issues. A focus group gives HR insight into the thought More..

What to Ask When You?re Invited to a Meeting

1) Where is the agenda? A meeting without an agenda is like a journey without amap; it will always waste your time. Once you have the agenda, make sure that itconsists of more than a list of words because this is almost useless. The agenda foran effective meeting will provide a complete description of how the meeting willproceed. 2) What is the goal? Is the chair seeking an agreement, a solution, or a plan?Knowing the goal gives you head start on participating effectively. Be cautious ofmeeting More..

Why Would Anyone Do That in My Meeting?

Imagine that you open a meeting by saying, "We need to talk about the budget." And someone responds with, "I named my dog Budget because everyone tells mehe's too big." After the laughter subsides, you wonder why anyone would make such a silly remarkin your meeting. And this leads to a larger question: Why would anyone misbehave in a meeting?Taken to the extreme, misbehavior can ruin a meeting. That wastes everyone's timeand squanders the opportunity to produce useful results. Here are some More..

Change Behaviors, Change Performance

Every organization is looking for the holy grail of performance enhancement, that one thing that, if it were changed even slightly, would push the productivity of a company way beyond the current level. Over the years there have been many solutions offered to the performance conundrum, from process improvement and process re-engineering to rightsizing and quality initiatives. All of which have had varying levels of success. One area that is perhaps overlooked when organizations undertake produ More..

Preparation: Your Companys Best Defense in Case of Catastrophe

You've hung out your shingle and are ready for business. But what if something unforeseen were to occur? Is your business truly ready for all that being in business entails? It only takes one catastrophic event to adversely impact a once thriving business. Recent world events: 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, the tsunami in Asia, along with other natural disasters act as a constant reminder that being well-prepared is often our best line of defense. What's that, you More..

Year 2010: Permanent Employees No Longer Required

Jack Welch joined a conference that was held in Duke Fuquay Business School where he was invited to promote his new book called "Winning". He told audience about how culture is important in a company. Culture builds integration and integration guarantees better products and services for customers. In GE's 1994 annual report his statements were no different. "Boundaryless behavior?" he said "?has become the right behavior at GE, and aligned with this behavior is a rewards system that recognizes t More..

Comparing Ancient Programs from the East to Modern Programs like Stephen Covey.

Comparing Corporate and Personal goal attainment programs that have developed over thousands of years with those of modern day legends such as Covey - "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" In the 1990s Stephen Covey's name became famous through the publication of the "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". As many know the "7 habits" are not a group of new concepts but age-old approaches to success represented in a way that can be clearly applied to modern day personal and corporate deve More..

Is Your Business Ethical?

Ethics - in a profession or trade - is that branch of philosophy which studies the principles of right and wrong in human conduct. Is your business ethical? What I mean is "Does your business do the right thing when faced with that decision?" It's a simple question, which many businesses struggle with. I just don't understand the struggle part? I have worked for companies that believed they were ethical, and really have no clue. Meaning the decisions they make everyday towards their customers More..

Sarbanes-Oxley and Section 404: Old Dog, New Teeth

The failures we have seen in the quality and integrity of financial reporting in corporate America are clear evidence that something was awry. It is the responsibility of corporate boards, managements, public accounting firms and regulatory agencies to put confidence back into the financial statements issued by our society's most significant entities. Although some would argue that Sarbanes Oxley went too far, it is also now evident that government action and the use of enforcement muscle was re More..

Lead to Succeed: The Seven Essential Steps to Work Leader Success

In my book "You're In Charge?What Now?" I use a mnemonic to describe the seven essential steps to work leader success. The mnemonic is "L.E.A.D.E.R.S" and each of these letters represents an essential step. While I have simplified the elements of leadership into seven words, the essence of my message is that being an effective, peak-performance work leader is simple, but not easy. The responsibility of being an effective work leader is much more important than being an effective "manager". Ever More..

Bye-Bye Boring Meetings! Make Yours Remarkable!

It's the middle of the night. You've woken up with a brilliant idea on how to improve the way your business product is delivered to your customers. You scribble it down and can't wait to share it with your co-workers during your morning meeting. The appointed hour arrives and you get your idea onto the agenda. Unfortunately the meeting proceeds without focus and at the speed of really good ketchup-slow. The person directing the meeting has gone over the same things you've already discussed ad n More..

Allan Kempert Discovers That Truly All You Gotta Do Is Ask

A year or so ago, I met Allan Kempert. Allan was the Quality Assurance Supervisor for a metal stamping company in Ontario, and just completed Norman Bodek's book, The Idea Generator, Quick and Easy Kaizen. As Allan explains, he couldn't put the book down because it was such a simple approach and he knew that it was going to empower the employees at his place of employment. In fact, Allan had tears in his eyes a few times while reading the book because he realized that he had come across a jewel. More..

Focus On the Prize

People talk to me about making personal and professional changes in their life. I hear comments about how hard they think it will be, concerns about their ability to be successful, pressure on themselves to produce results, etc. The anticipation (what you imagine or assume will happen) of the experience can be daunting enough to deter a person from taking the first step! How often does the anticipation match the reality of what happens? If your thoughts and emotions are getting in the way of wha More..

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