The tragic events in Boston last month serve as a stark and vivid reminder that we face risk every day. Regardless of whether it’s in business or in our personal life, our acceptance of dealing with anticipated and non-anticipated peril starts when you crawl out of bed.
As a business owner or manager, you’re probably in charge at some level in being a leader in the face of crisis. A bombing like what occurred at the Boston Marathon will most likely never happen to you (although merchants and business leaders in Boston may not have envisioned it, either). That being said, I promise you that you will face different crises in your business that imperil your operations, your revenue, and your reputation. read more »
Recruiting and hiring good talent for your business is the “Holy Grail” for business leaders. Your investment is loaded with money, time and risk. It takes a minimum of 18 months just to break even on that investment, much less to start seeing a return. That’s why being able to maximize that talent and accelerate your return on investment is so critical to your success as a business.
Why is it then that many businesses take so long to get those employees out of the garage band mode, and simply hoping that a few will turn into rock stars?
The answer is that they don’t know how to coach the American Idol wannabes from start to finish. If you have ever spent any time at all watching the FOX reality singing show, you’ve seen the judges and other singing icons offering coaching, mentoring, and often a good dose of tough love to accelerate the learning. read more »
Do you work for a horrible boss?
Many in business for themselves have “bosses” that do things that would never be tolerated by anyone else.
They can be demeaning; insulting; overbearing; demand overtime without pay; not allow vacation; and most importantly ridicule with bad language that promotes poor performance, lack of creativity, and really bad morale.
Unfortunately, those “bosses” are you.
Poor self talk is endemic in small business owners and executives. It’s so easy to fall into patterns of self-flagellation and nothing good comes from it. There are many reasons for it read more »
January is the time to plan big, right? Business plans are created, amended, folded, stapled, mutilated, and disseminated. Business strategies are set when these business plans pop up and everyone gets very excited.
Then it’s February.
Resolutions and business plans — both business and personal — are made with great intentions. And most are doomed to fail. Why? Because resolutions and business plans are overrated. They fail because you might just hit them.
It doesn’t matter what kind of business you are in. My advice to you is to eschew a business plan and create a powerful marketing plan. Having a business plan without a strategy on how you’re going to bring business in is like taking off for a secluded vacation getaway without a GPS, a map, or a Boy Scout compass. read more »
Crisis certainly reared its ugly head in 2012.
Savage hurricanes and storms battered the Eastern seaboard. Deadly shootings broke out in a school, movie theater, and shopping mall. Key executives resigned in disgrace and damaged reputations. The aftermath of a child abuse scandal rocked a major university. And in thousands of small businesses around the country, fires destroyed buildings; water damage ruined equipment; data was breached; property was stolen; power outages suspended operations, and employees lost their jobs. The latter cases go mostly unnoticed to the public; however, they impact untold numbers of lives.
When I first started coaching high school basketball, my coaching mentor told me that I could expect at least three crises a year at a minimum. How I responded to those crises would determine the success of the season. read more »
I recently conducted a survey of small business owners on what challenges they foresaw in the coming year that could adversely affect their business. Here is a compilation of the most common results, along with suggestions on how to prepare.
While none of us has a crystal ball, we all have the ability to be prepared. In my experience over the past 7 years as a consultant to countless businesses, 90% of you…
I’ve always thought the Grinch got a bad rap.
Here’s a guy who was determined on ruining everyone’s holiday by stealing all their gifts and decorations, believing that they would all crumble in a heap of despair and agony. SPOILER ALERT — it didn’t work! The townspeople still rejoiced and in so doing, eventually turned the heart of the green goblin and everyone lived happily ever after.
Too bad that the same jubilant ending doesn’t always happen for us in business. Why? Because the Grinch trying to ruin our joy is really ourselves, manifested in our own business and careers.
The hard part is we are often in denial about this issue. We allow the stress and strain of money, time, family business friction, employee dilemmas, holiday parties, and unrealized goals to steal our joy during a time when we should be rejoicing. read more »
Fear not. This is not a political op-ed you are about to read. You’ve probably had enough of that by now!
As this column hits your mailbox, we are within days of finishing the 2012 election that started three years ago. If you’re like me you’ve cast your ballot and can’t wait for the political pugilism to end. However, there are still lessons to be learned from it, and we would be negligent if we didn’t take a little time to explore them.
First, let’s define what these “lessons” are, and what they are not. This has nothing to do with how either presidential candidate might or might not make a good leader. I fear we as a country are now better at attracting candidates (from both parties) with skills to campaign, rather than skills in governing or leading. You as a business leader need to be able to do both. That is, send a message, build a brand, create evangelists, and be a leader. read more »
Wealth creation. Wealth management. Wealth strategies.
These buzzwords have been popular over the years to entice people to start saving, investing, and managing money for retirement. While all noble objectives, perhaps we need to do a little better job of defining wealth. On the surface, wealth means money. If you are creating wealth, you are making money, right? If you are managing wealth, you are making that money work for you to make more money.
I don’t believe the definition of true wealth is money. I think it’s something more visionary, yet very important to one’s motivation to creating wealth. Here is my definition of true wealth… read more »
