When you're starting a business, you might wish for a lot of things, like having more than enough customers or not having to do marketing. But wishing is weak willed, having no momentum behind it. When you wish for something, you're not coming from a place of having a strong vision. Instead, wishes tend to be dreamlike, wispy and not grounded. Wishes are future oriented. To run a business, you need to be intentional, focused and highly aware of the present for it is only from the present that y More..

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Diversity in the Workplace

As you look around your office, is everyone just like you? Probably not. The demographics of the American workforce have changed dramatically over the last 50 years. In the 1950s, more than 60% of the American workforce consisted of white males. They were typically the sole breadwinners in the household, expected to retire by age 65 and spend their retirement years in leisure activities. Today, the American workforce is a better reflection of the population with a significant mix of genders, rac More..

Its All About The Customers, Baby

If you want to ensure a steady stream of customers in your business, you must always remember why you're in business in the first place. Sure you want to earn a decent income for yourself, but you also want to provide a useful service don't you? That second reason should take precedence over the first. Your main aim should be to provide a useful service to people. Making lots of money from it should be secondary. When you have your priorities in that order, guess what happens? The money star More..

Five Tips for Analyzing an Income Statement

In today's article, we'll be looking at the income statement, which is the most deceptively simple of the major financial statements. I say simple because it's just a list of all the revenue, minus all the expenses, to calculate what's left over in profit. It's no more difficult than putting your family budget together, right? That's where the deceptive part of the description comes in. The items on the income statement are easily manipulated by, say, less-than-honest management, and don't nece More..

Narcissism in the Boardroom

The perpetrators of the recent spate of financial frauds in the USA acted with callous disregard for both their employees and shareholders - not to mention other stakeholders. Psychologists have often remote-diagnosed them as "malignant, pathological narcissists". Narcissists are driven by the need to uphold and maintain a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of the narcissistic personality disorder. The false self is projected to the world in order More..

The Narcissist in the Workplace

To a narcissist-employer, the members of his "staff" are Secondary Sources of Narcissistic Supply. Their role is to accumulate the supply (in human speak, remember events that support the grandiose self-image of the narcissist) and to regulate the Narcissistic Supply of the narcissist during dry spells (simply put, to adulate, adore, admire, agree, provide attention and approval and so on or, in other words, be an audience). The staff (or should we say "stuff"?) is supposed to remain passive. Th More..

Give Yourself a Boss? Day Gift

Become a better boss and reap the benefits Another interesting study was done. One that should really catch our attention. It reveals that employees who are happier and treated well, produce better results than those who are unhappy. And most frontline workers are unhappy and are looking elsewhere for work. No, it shouldn't surprise us. But somehow it does. It surprises us first, because we are stunned that a study had to be done to prove something that is so obvious. The outcome of the study More..

Give Yourself a Boss Day Gift, Part 2: Are You the Position or the Person?

Are you the position or the person? Bosses can lose their own identity sometimes. It's easy. It happens a lot. The results are devastating to both the workers and to the supervisor. When we are the boss, there are many dangers in becoming you the 'position' instead of you the 'person'. There are many reasons why supervisors morph into being the serious, alienated, distracted, unapproachable boss. One is that we want so badly to do a good job, and we think one way to do that is to take the job More..

Truth or Consequences: How to Give Employee Feedback

In the bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered that, "the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality." And, in his recent autobiography, Jack Welch reports that he spent about half of his time on people: recruiting new talent, picking the right people for particular positions, grooming young stars, developing managers, dealing with under performers, and reviewing the entire talent pool. Says Welch, "Having the most talented peop More..

Smart Choices: How to Hire the Best

Your organization's continued growth and success depend on making smart choices and hiring the best. Today's economy is exploding with talent, allowing you to be selective about the staff you hire. Yet, the crucial step to filling a position is finding the right talent for your organization - someone that has the skills for the job, easily blends with the culture, interacts well with the team and believes in your mission. In his best seller, Good to Great, Jim Collins writes, "In the good-to-gr More..

Why All Managers Are Alike

Because, like you I suspect, they have key target audiences whose behaviors help or hinder them in achieving their organizational objectives. But even in their own best interests, too few involve themselves in their public relations effort to the degree they should. The result can be a PR program that overemphasizes things like special events, media relations or communications tactics, without a basic, realistic plan for delivering the key audience behaviors they need to succeed. I'm talking More..

How To Prevent Your New Manager From Becoming A Statistic

According to a study by the Manchester Group, 4 out of 10 new managers fail in the first 18 months! The top 5 reasons cited: Not building partnerships or teams with colleagues and peers Unclear expectations Not enough political savvy Takes too long to learn the job Inability to balance work and personal lives Every day new managers are hired or promoted because of "what they know". When they fail to thrive it's because of "who they are" or "how they go about getting things done". While t More..

Invite Self-Managed Staff

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being." -Goethe Two hundred years ago, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, German poet and philosopher, knew how to inspire and interact with others: recognize the best in them and act upon those positive expectations. This takes conscious effort and constant vigilance to be self-aware of our actions. And we owe our fellow human beings nothing less. Successful supervisors live this sentiment daily in More..

Virtual Assistance: A Money Saving Opportunity For Employers

What is a Virtual Assistant? A Virtual Assistant is a highly skilled, independent entrepreneur who provides business services in a remote or virtual environment. Some have used terms like telecommuter or working from home. Employers are looking for alternatives to having a full-time employee. Hiring a skilled Virtual Assistant helps to cut costs normally associated with on-site employees (no need for extra overhead and space, taxes, benefits, continued training), and frees up valuable time to f More..

Use Every Weapon You Have

One of the strongest weapons available allows business, non-profit and association managers to begin changing the behaviors of their key external audiences in ways that lead directly to achieving their primary operating objectives. The name of that weapon? The fundamental premise of public relations: People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, pe More..

Time Management - How to Have Productive Meetings

One of the greatest time wasters of all are unnecessary or poorly run meetings. If you want to dramatically improve your time management skills, then learn how to have productive meetings. "Brian" is the Operations Manager in a large corporation. Every Monday morning, his CEO has a managers' meeting . This is what usually occurs: The agenda is circulated the day before which means the managers have little time to prepare. The meeting always starts late as the CEO will wait for latecomers. In More..

Time Management Tips for Managers

Late last year I was presenting a workshop for the senior managers of a major organisation. Whilst doing a pre-workshop survey to assess the challenges these managers were experiencing it became very apparent to me that many of them were showing the signs of business burn-out. And it was no wonder why. They were suffering from 'Priority Problems'. Quite simply they were making the mistake of doing the urgent rather than the important tasks. They were working extremely long hours, with no time f More..

How To Decrease Profits Without Really Trying

Hurting your sales efforts can be accomplished easily with the proper guidance. The following effective yet simple ideas are designed to generate results when implemented into your sales strategy. ? Don't listen to what your clients are saying. You are the expert and prospects should be happy that you have been able to set aside some time for them. Spend your time talking more than asking questions and listening. Try to not answer as many of their questions and concerns as possible, this turns More..

Manage Your Business from the Rockies, not the Prairies

The day job as a manager is all about managing your people to deliver, to meet the needs of your customers or clients and generating success after success! Right? And you have consequences if that doesn't happen. Worst case scenario is that you lose your job or your business, because your people haven't delivered. So the temptation is understandable. Get in there, dirty your hands and work your socks off making it happen. Admirable, fulfilling even! But how much energy have you got? How hard More..

Managing the Human Resource Project

We obtain strategic results by aligning HR mission, vision and values. The following overview highlights a macro approach to project management. Seeking a stretch assignment, such as ownership of a major corporate HR initiative, we lead our organization by example. Strategic project management affords an exciting and challenging opportunity to direct our futures and show case our talents. The VP of HR announces to the team that we must transition from a decentralized function to a centralized f More..

Human Resource Communication Pays Off

Human Resource Communications and Corporate Communications - are they one in the same? Both plan and develop written communication strategies to further the understanding and perceptions of their audience. Both provide counsel and editorial support for management communications. Business communications transmits and manages messages that inform, persuade and collaborate by speaking the language of the company. HR Communications creates a "one company" culture, integrates acquisitions and facili More..

Outsourcing Problem Analysis

As an HR professional, you have responsibilities in several broad areas that have a significant impact on your company's bottom line, directly contributing to the corporate return on investment. The outsourcing choices you make are critical decision points that affect both your employer and the HR community at large. We recognize that you want and need to make informed choices, and we can help. The following problem analysis explores emerging strategies in human resources. Increased workloads More..

Making Change Work

Shaky Foundations Whilst over 60% of businesses will be looking to implement some form of business improvement initiative over the next 18 months, less than 1 in 4 of these change programmes will achieve any worthwhile results that are sustainable for a further 12 months post the introduction of change. This brings into focus two key problems: 1. Some 40% of businesses are not planning to introduce any form of change, even though it is likely that there will be significant changes in their ma More..

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