Tomorrow

is the 2nd day

 of the rest

   of your life!  

So, “business as usual” is an expression left over from the days of yore. Get rid of it! Click on Delete! There is no such thing anymore. No business that’s managed to survive this long into this dying quail economy has a “usual” anywhere on its plate.

This is especially true given The Great Global Warming reports whose noteriety earned an infamous Nobel Prize on the cusp of all the extreme cold temperature onsets. 

I mean, consider that business climate (as we used to know it) has been under crippling storm interferences from the Nation’s capitol, and from deadly mass media manipulations blowing out of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

If we look over here, at this gathering high pressure system in the Midwest we can probably trace back its origins to corruption in the Chicago area which was stirred up by former community organizers and regularly energized by “Hollywood’s finest” over on the left coast.

Ah, but you only (and rightfully, I might add) want the bottom line: Will it rain or snow?  

Yes. Depending on where you are, at least one and maybe both!

Whatever you’ve suffered to date in trying to keep arms distance from the incompetent government’s meddling hands and from the pathetic examples set by America’s corporate giants, is bound to get worse before it gets better. But it need not get worse for YOU! That’s your choice. You have the ability to stay in control of your ship and steer it through the coming storms. 

It will take some preparation and a vigilant sense of readiness, but you know what? You’re a pro at that! You’ve proven it by getting this far. Take time this week and next to enjoy your family and rest your business brain. But don’t hang up the phone. This is the most ideal period of the year to think about direction instead of survival.

Map out where you’re headed. Check the long-range weather reports and plan course corrections accordingly. Start to look at the prospects for added revenue streams that do not stray too far from your basic business. Begin piecing together a branding strategy and approach that can take you one step up on the competition.

Look a little harder for the opportunities that are there in the corners, the ones you might have passed over before you restructured or streamlined operations. You may have to “knuckle under”! That’s an expression that does still apply. Here’s another:

Open minds open doors.

Pay attention to proper, productive goal-setting. Pay attention to your SELF and your stress levels and your health (because the best open minds and open doors in business mean nothing if your body locked up and shuts down!) Stress, today, may not be greater than in other generations, but it’s certainly quicker, so you need keep pace –and set the pace– are you ready? Set? Go!

  # # # 

302.933.0116   Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Headed to 2012–and

your business

is still breathing?

You got guts!

It takes more, much more, than an MBA, family inheritence, or good luck to have a living, breathing business survive this still-spiraling economy. It takes guts.

Guts? Right. You must have ’em, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Okay, enough with the backpats, where do you go from here? Yeah, into January, right. I know. But beyond that, what?

Since you’re an entrepreneur preoccupied with making your idea work, you’ll probably be doing all your gift shopping online, or running around at the 11th hour grabbing stuff off what’s left on nearby retail shelves.

If that’s not the case, and you’re a true romantic who has planned every inch, and had a thousand hours to plan and organize and wrap, you’re probably a corporate type who did all your Christmas shopping in July, and not reading this anyway.

So, here’s a thought: What about taking yourself through a group brainstorming experience —  by yourself?

Is that like suggesting that you do a multiple-personalities thing? Yes, but not so close to the edge that you’ll need a shrink by New Year’s.

I’m suggesting you start with a pad and pen or pencil (if any of those tools are still within your reach). Laptops and all those other hand-heold devices just don’t cut it! They don’t give you enough time to think.

Besides a little practice with that lost art called handwriting, the experience alone could be a good stimulous (speaking of which, Red Bull isn’t a necessary accompaniment, but you may want a cup of coffee?). 

Next, turn off your cell phone; I promise the world won’t end. Then find a place where you won’t be interrupted. (HA! Talk about challenge!) Maybe it has to be a locked car in your driveway?

At the top of your page, write the one business issue that is most important for you to address in 2012.

Be realistic.

Draw a vertical line down the middle of the page.

Put a + (plus) sign on the left and a – (minus) sign on the right. Start to write down everything you can think of (in the left-hand column) that could be a positive outcome of resolving this issue. Everything you imagine as negative on the right. Think freely.

Don’t criticize or second-guess yourself. Instead, go back over your list from the perspective of what you imagine to be your most trusted advisor or most valuable employee. How would it change?

When you’ve given these two columns about 10-12 minutes for each of your split personalities, STOP! Take a swig of coffee. Take some deep breaths. Rub your hands together briskly.

Next page: Write down the three steps you can take on Tuesday, January 3rd, to make some of that left-hand column stuff on your first page start to happen. Rank order the priority of steps.

Make some specific notes about the who, what, when, where, and how each of those three steps can/should/will occur.

Give them a timeline.

Be realistic.

Keep it all flexible: your rankings, your steps, your timeline, and what you expect for results (yes, without this, it’s hard to know why you’re pursuing anything) . . . flexible.

If you get close to the date and it’s not going to happen, don’t whip yourself (that’s hard to do anyway), just move the date. If the steps involve money or other people, leave them flexible enough to adjust in case things don’t go swimmingly (which as you know, they rarely do!)  

Fold up the pages. Put them in your pocket. Type them into your computer tomorrow (not today) and edit them in the process. Share the information as appropriate.

Congratulate yourself for doing goal-setting the right (most productive) way. Now make it happen! And stop worrying. Remember, you got guts!

 # # # 

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Businesspeople down in

Onunderoverup

are too busy blaming

instead of solving.

“Down in Onunderoverup”? Huh? Oh: Down and in . . . Revenues and profits are down. It’s the worst holiday shopping season in memory. In and on . . . Brick and mortar businesses are getting killed by the invasion of online businesses. On, under, and over . . . Online businesses are being undercut by overkill retail sales events. Up . . .C’mon folks, let’s own up to the reality that this is a bite-the-bullet Christmas for probably two-thirds of all Americans.

IF — like many others this year who don’t work for do-nothing, free-spending government agencies or bailed-out corporate giants — IF you happen to be having a tighter Christmas ahead than those you’ve left behind, you may want to consider three points:

• Unless you choose for it to be (behavior IS a choice), you need not think that it’s corny, hokey, old-fashioned, ancient, not P.C., or “yeah, so?” (Thoughts are things!), to consider this first point.

1)  Here’s how it goes: choose for a minute or two to think that Christmas is not all about you, except as a a joyful celebrant.

While you’re staring at your screen right now, dismantle the whole holiday stress clog-up in your brain (take some deep breaths) so you can step back with a fresh perspective and see Christmas more realistically, for what it is: the celebration of the birth of Christ.

• Okay, now, flying on the shirttails of the first point, comes this second point to think on.

2)  How have you chosen to let others (and your self) set you up over your lifetime to choose over-the-top artificial representations of this joyful event to bump the real thing off into the wings from stage center?

How have you become victimized by decades of deep and hard-hitting commercialism?

• Have all those sales, ads, commercials, emails, txtmsgs, endorsements, and “perfect family with perfect dog in their perfect home setting” images left you with the guilties because you can’t afford that surprise diamond or vacation gift for your spouse this year? Because the kids will have to settle for the cheap iPod and a slightly used Wii? Just one chew-bone and a single squeaky toy for Rufus?

3)  Welcome to reality. It’s the same place that many (probably the majority) of your customers have been quietly and more steadily inhabiting over the last couple of years.

It’s not just you. It’s not just them. It’s the vast majority of the world that’s actively downsizing 2010 Christmas gift-giving and expenses.  

Well, realizing that you’re not alone sometimes serves to soften the edge. You should, by the way, also know that I am not a minister of any kind, nor have I any religious drums to beat . . . what then?

It’s Christmas!

Skimpy perhaps by past life standards, but this is this life, here and now.

We only go around in it once, and we’re in it together:

business owners, partners, managers, employees, suppliers, investors, service and sales professionals, referrers, AND customers! 

In a time of year that accents good will, “blame” is a nonproductive misfit. In a time of life that businesses struggle with the economy, fixing the economy becomes Job One for businesses.

What can yours do? What can you do? What can you do now, tonight, tomorrow, to take a major step toward righting your ship?

# # # 

www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Stop Dreaming!  

Hope for economic 

change will not come 

from Washington.

It can only come

from YOU! . . . 

Roll up your sleeves!

CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS . . .

It’s time to step up to the plate, and accept the fact that we are not just the movers and shakers of the business world, we are quite literally the catalysts of society. Washington is not about to solve the economy or hand over the job creation tax incentives we need in order to get the job done.

We have to make things happen on our own.

Lest you have any doubt (or in case you’ve bought into token SBA talk), here’s some food for thought:

• America’s small businesses have been painted into a corner. Billions have been doled out to corporate giants (to appease union voter support instead of solve the problem). Recipients are using tax dollars to dig themselves deeper into the holes they created.

When entrepreneurs dig into a hole, they get up and out, and try digging someplace else. 

• Like a fancy dinner out with one’s spouse while the baby starves, a long trail of reckless spending has been carved out for creeping socialism programs that have no ability to do anything for the economy except increase the deficit.

Entrepreneurs consider worst-case scenarios and then take only reasonable risks!

• Next, we face the national healthcare plan that can bankrupt more small businesses than any other single act in history.

Forcing entrepreneurs to pay for healthcare coverage (including for illegal immigrants!) and deleting the free-market competition that has made America’s healthcare program the world’s best, is pure blindness.

• Now, we can choose our own healthcare professionals, institutions and methods — choices that will be eliminated. Many top  doctors are already seeking early retirement and new careers.

The tax-cut game is back to stage center (a diversionary tactic?) — all while unemployment continues to worsen. So, timing-wise, it’s back to the “He who hesitates is lost!” entrepreneurial spirit.

A prosperity direction?

Let’s remind ourselves please that just a handful of entrepreneurs is more likely to save our economy than all of politics combined. 

Why?  Because only entrepreneurs understand how to make things happen, and then make them happen. The antithesis of government and big business thinking, entrepreneurs believe and practice the philosophy that some action is always better than no action, and that “if it ain’t broke, fix it anyway!” 

Throughout U.S. history– from Henry Ford to Dale Carnegie to Thomas Edison to Bill Gates to Mary Kay Ash and Oprah Winfrey–  it’s been entrepreneurs that have achieved their burning desires, and created jobs, who have overcome crushing economic defeat, government incompetence, and corporate greed.

It will happen, this straightening of the crooked path, but only when the innovative pursuits of entrepreneurs are able to create new jobs. It is that innovative spirit that throbs deep within our existence as the guiding light and stronghold of leadership in the free world.

Sure, we can choose to wallow in misery–as many terrorist forces would no doubt relish–or just as easily choose to make an active and conscious choice to give America genuine hope and genuine change.  

How will this happen?

We who are blessed by America’s freedom, will help it to happen by what we do with every day, and with the gift of life each of us carries from dawn to dusk.

What we DO with that, how we use it to grant others freedom from oppression and depression, each in our own unique ways, giving others our own unique kinds of pats on the back… is how it will happen! 

We shall rise up as supporters and igniters, lending and offering the incentives to make forward motion possible. By putting our shoulders to the wheel, and marching alongside others, moving in the same directions of enlightenment, we will make the difference.

The investments we make of ourselves in ourselves, and in clearing the way for those who have the gift of making lemonade from lemons, will make the difference.

Think about someone you know who glows with that “git ‘er done” energy and drive…reach out with belief and encouragement…it will work as surely as even the tides rise and fall, and the moon fills with light. 

# # #

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Overkill business efforts breed failure . . .

LIKE GREAT MARKETING,

GREAT LEADERSHIP

 DOESN’T TRY FOR A 

HOME RUN EVERY AT-BAT

The best creative marketing talent, plans, and campaigns — and the world’s greatest leaders — are born and inspired not by blood, sweat, tears, and insanely long hours, but by focus.

By adjusting the camera or rifle lens, the stage spotlights, the binoculars, the telescope, the magnifying glass, the microscope, and computerized zoom controls, we increase our visual focus for a moment, a few moments, maybe a few hours.

We do the same by adjusting volume, speaker, bass and treble, balance and other media controls to focus our hearing.

Ongoing mental focus, such as that which is evident in literally every leadership or creative marketing performance, is driven by adjusting and channeling powers of concentration.

It is not the product of (pay attention exam-cramming students!) working deliriously through the night, night after night.

Neither is it the product of entertaining others with razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle. (My father used to say, “Don’t give me a song and dance routine; just answer the question!” My father would have made a good Judge Judy.)

Most assuredly, great leadership and great marketing are not the results of political smoke and mirror acts that we see routinely practiced in virtually every local, state, and (especially) federal government-based and corporate giant-based entity in existence. 

Having a true focus means we can “see” and are aware of the actions and influences on the periphery of our focus targets, but that our minds are keenly tuned to the point of what we’re aiming for.

That demands concentration, but it is not necessarily “hard work.” It is what you choose it to be. And ease comes with practice.

Practice? Like what?

• You’re in New York City? Go sit in the middle of Grand Central Station at rush hour and write a three-page essay about your own leadership challenges and abilities.
• You’re in Delaware? Go sit in the middle of a 1,000-chicken chicken coop and read and digest and summarize two articles on industry issues that affect your business. (No ear plugs allowed. Oh, and I hope you like feathers!)
• You’re in Chicago? 1) Get as close as you legally can to O’Hare Airport (Car windows open! Chilly, huh? Dress warm. Bring coffee.) 2) Read and answer three days’ worth of emails on your plugged-in laptop.
• You’re in San Francisco? (What are you doing there?) Hop on the trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf at lunchtime and –while on the trolley– write (yes, with pen and paper) your own obituary (Now THAT’s an exercise that takes concentration!)
• You’re in Hawaii? Well, we all know about those cliffs over the ocean, and waterfalls, and . . . okay, you’re not reading this anyway. Aloha to you too!  

You get the idea. Challenge yourself (and remember to breathe)

Here’s the bottom line: Wherever you are, if you’re serious about wanting to radically improve your leadership and creative marketing skills, spend more energy learning how to concentrate and focus.

Uh, you DO remember The Karate Kid movies? Well, pay more attention to yourself and stop trying so hard. Working yourself into a frenzy with busyness that you think impresses others, doesn’t. All it does is blockade others by making you inaccessible to them.

If you’re actually trying to be inaccessible, you are not leader material, you will never be a creative marketing star, and you are probably best suited to run for political office or work in some government or corporate-giant dungeon for thirty years.

Hey, it’s your life! (And odds are pretty good that it will only happen once!) Do you really want to make a difference?

~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

P A Y     N O W !

F o o l e d   y o u,  h u h ?

(You thought maybe the two words were: %@~&  *#^! ?)

Well, consider this: The last thing small or medium-size professional practice or business owners or managers want, is a surprise!

Nobody wants a management or staffing surprise. Nor an operational or equipment surprise.  And –in my lifetime, and discounting the futile pursuit of a winning lottery ticket– I’ve never met or even ever heard of anyone in search of a financial surprise! 

News Flash . . .

Unexpected, unplanned-for immediate

payment is due on the spot!  “PAY NOW!” . . . OW!  

Unfortunately, with many (normally till-dipping) hands being forced by sputtering national and global economic crises, financial surprises have become all too common going forward from 2008.

The kinds of trigger fingers that pull off high-pressure instant payment demands are big-time stress creators. 

Listen,” he says into the phone, “your 4pm Friday order requested RUSH delivery; it’s 8am Saturday; if you can’t get here to open your business and pay the $742.37 due, I have no choice but to ship it back and you’ll get it in a week or two!” (AAaaack!) 

                                      

I’m sorry no one told you that the minute you sign this, like you just did, you are guaranteeing immediate cash payment of $27,000.

If you can’t come up with that amount by the end of the day, a warrant will be served requiring payment in full in ten days plus $5,000 in interest, late fees, and attorney costs.

So what’s it gonna be? 27 now or 32 big ones a week from Thursday?” (AAaaack!) 

                                             

The good news is that you have no outstanding delinquencies.

The bad news is that you have only until Friday to produce $38,579.46 in back taxes for the IRS Agents who called to say they’ll be here at 9am sharp.

No, the accountant didn’t know that the prior accountant had been withholding the withholding . . .” (AAaaack!)

                                      

Are you getting ulcers just from reading these? Okay, well, maybe at least a little lump in your throat?

How do you think YOUR customers, clients and patients feel about YOUR collection tactics? Are you leaving them breathing room? Have your policies stretched enough to accommodate today’s hard times?

Are you taking full advantage of the opportunities to strengthen your reputation for being a high-trust, integrity-based, good citizen business by helping out those who’ve been loyal patrons?

People who were there for you when you needed customers, who have returned time and again, who have referred others, who treat you and your staff like members of their community. (To borrow an old slogan from the world’s leading experts in product and service consistency and change just one word: THEY deserve a break today!)

You “OWE” it to them? Absolutely.

And when you SHOW it to them, sit back and enjoy the magic carpet ride it puts you on! Your business will fly over the competition and never slow down because everyone appreciates a business that proves its appreciation for the business it gets!

No need to give the store away. Simply do what you can to make it easier for your customers, clients and patients to pay for the goods and services they purchase from you. . . the same way you’d like suppliers and vendors to treat you.

We all need to lean a bit on one another these days, and surprise financial demands and pronouncements serve only to short-circuit those opportunities to cultivate and build a loyal following on human values.

Dignity and respect and helping others go the extra mile accomplishes more than shouts, pouts, threats, and late charges. Idealistic and naive? No, realistic and experienced.  

~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Here you are, set to your own music, on a blog platter:

THE GREAT

SPUNK & GUMPTION

RECOVERY INITIATIVE

Looking back into this site’s archives, I ran across a couple of posts I wrote titled, “What Sport Is Your Business?“ and “What’s Your T-Shirt Say?” Both are still timely and both are worthy of your quick review — if you actually get through this post!

An hour later (after looking back on those earlier posts), I found myself sitting in a parking lot playing with my new satellite car radio, and noticed a string of song titles that seemed to accurately (and often humorously) describe many past, present, and future business situations.

Here’s a sampler to kick your brain into gear enough for you to come up with your own songs that best represent your past, present, and future business (and yes, believe it or not, all of these were once big hits!):

• Spooky

• Those Were The Days

• These Are The Days

• Let It Snow

• Let It Rock

• Let The Sunshine In

• Just A Dream

• Dreams

• Dreamin’

• Trouble

• Rescue Me

• Slow ‘n Easy

• Thin Air

• Over My Head

• Sailin’

• Step Right Up

• Animal Rights

• Comin’ Under Fire

• Up Against The Wall

• Gone

• It’s A Grand Night For Singing

• Bad Luck

• Hey Hey Hey

     . . . Add your own here:___________

Good job! Next, let’s start to explore if where your business is right now is where you want it to be. How did it get to this point? When you started it or picked it up or inherited it, did you infuse piles of energy and time and money into it? Are you still doing that? If you stopped somewhere along the way, when? Where? How?

Are you still “stopped”? (or pretending not to be, even though you know you are?) 

HOW are you choosing to stay there— stagnant, dormant, status quo? (In other words, what specific steps have you chosen to take, or are continuing to take every day, that have left your competitors little choice but to pass you by? What are you willing to do about that right NOW? What CAN you do right NOW?)

Where’s that spunk and gumption

that you started with?

It doesn’t take a fat bank account or 20-hour workdays or “breakthrough technology” to be able to pick up most businesses that have grown lethargic or have quietly given in to our stress-breeding economy in order to turn things around and/or get re-focused.

It takes acceptance of where things are, determination to get things moving again, recognition that it’s all a matter of choice and leadership (employee leadership, industry and market leadership, customer service and community leadership), and re-ignition of that burning desire to succeed to make it all work.

Can you? Of course you can. You got this far didn’t you? You’re reading this blog post, aren’t you? You want to, don’t you? Then, do it! Stop listening to negative, woe-is-me songs in your head (and on the radio!), and replace them with positive, upbeat tunes.

HOW?

Just CHOOSE to change the channel!

Disney wasn’t far off base when he had

The Seven Dwarfs sing “Whistle While You Work!” 

~~~~~~~~~

302.933.0116   Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is

not a long-term survival policy!

And here we have the government, forcibly seeking control and injecting its uninformed, inexperienced naivete into private industries.

Here we have federal “leadership” essentially robbing businesses that should instead be receiving tax incentive support to bail out the government’s reckless spending sprees that have accomplished literally nothing except pile up additional deficit burdens.

Once again (or more accurately, “still”), SMEs (Small and Medium size Enterprises) stand quivering on the cusp of business-survival-threatening, ill-conceived, politically-motivated federal healthcare legislation.

This impending healthcare doom affords business owners and managers one of the greatest opportunities for self-destruct since before the Industrial Revolution. But before you jump from the roof, consider how to avoid last-minute meltdowns.

BESIDES the fact that major Medicare funding will be redirected to Medicaid coffers because . . .

(it has been strongly suggested — but not dared to be openly acknowledged — that “Medicare recipients are mostly seniors who will die anyway”)  

. . . the bulk of the program will be supported by contributions from businesses, which will be forced to provide coverage for those who don’t earn it! 

A seven-year-old recently confided that “it doesn’t sound like there’s much care in the healthcare thing!”

Well, there’s most certainly not any “care” for the world of small and medium-size business. Let’s remember, and not incidentally, that entrepreneurial venture job creation is repeatedly pushed to the forefront of economist agendas as the most important key to economic recovery. So why the government’s deaf ear? Politics.

Tax and spend, and more government control, apparently beats life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So what’s a small business owner to do?

• First, fight back! Work with other businesses and local organizations to promote the need for government to support meaningful job creation tax incentives for small business.
• Do everything you can to influence government representatives to repeal the mandated national healthcare plan and to override any veto of that repeal. Support free-market competition healthcare. It’s the only way to choose your own physician and treatment plan. It’s the only way to keep talented physicians working as physicians.

(A 5-star heart surgeon I know is considering being a horse trainer because he can no longer afford skyrocketing malpractice premiums!)

You need a consequence?  You will pay for it

 many times over in the coming years! 

It offers you no benefits.  Is that enough?

• Second, do NOT rob Peter to pay Paul. Just because Washington is trying to get you to think that way, it is not healthy business. It’s like taking loans to pay back loans.
• You are playing with fire if you decide, for example, to ante up the no-chance-of-winning healthcare dollars you don’t have by cutting back, for example, on your marketing budget. Marketing is (or should be if it’s not) a bottom line accountable expense.

Marketing is your only chance to drive the business in the front door that the government is pickpocketing the revenues of from you and taking out the back door. At this point, economic survival is all about cash flow. Bring it in faster than it goes out!

If you’re forced to cut, take your scalpel elsewhere! Simple, huh?      

~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You,

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 Merger, Acquisition,

Bankruptcy…

Loan, Record Sales,

Relocation, Fire,

Flood, Robbery, 

Management/Staffing

Overhaul… New Product,

Service or Market…

Bad Press, Economy, Stress.

How rare it is that small and medium size enterprise owners and managers have the foresight to reorganize their operations proactively. What’s that childhood message we get? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”? Well, that little rule of thumb might have been a truism when we were kids, but –in case you haven’t noticed lately– the world has changed, and so has business.

The strongholds of entrepreneurial leadership ushered in by today’s technology have actually helped to bring about business and market transformation by practicing the exact opposite credo from what many of us grew up with. Today, entire companies are devoted to the idea that “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway!”  

And so, for the most part, in entrepreneurial ranks today, it’s the young who are the brave, who take reasonable risks — and who stand alone as representing the only real prospects for reversing our still desperately sinking economy.

But before you go rushing off to do this new jobs stuff, and leaping blindly into some expansion plan that relies on what you are NOT an expert at, remember to“stick to your knitting!”   

Only new and revitalized small entrepreneurial ventures have successfully stood the test of time as the single most monumentally significant source of new job creation.

It is this place alone that the government needs to focus some genuine (more than SBA tokenism) tax incentives to create and grow jobs.

• FACT: Giant corporations, such as those that received bailout tax dollars, do not create jobs. They have never been a key source for job creation.

• FACT: New government jobs are not within the legitimate realm of job creation measurement because they are inevitably “favor” jobs that serve little if any purpose, and are –second– paid for with tax dollars, which simply increases the deficit! 

So, what’s one way for an SME management team to deliver a meaningful counterattack on the purveyors of our faltering economy?  

Don’t wait for a major event to trigger reorganizational activity.

The rule here remains to always think first and act second or “Measure twice, cut once!” 

Oh, right, and choosing some action is almost always better than choosing no action.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You,

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

PULLING TEETH!

BANGING HEADS!

LOCKING HORNS!

Find yourself doing much of that lately?

Maybe it’s the economy?

When times are tight, people get tight.

When people get tight, they can get worried.

When people worry, they can become defensive, aggressive, manipulative, territorial, and often, job-threatened.

Reaching agreement becomes increasingly challenging, and sometimes it feels close to impossible. It can be especially problematic when working with volunteer groups. http://bit.ly/bLAB9s

When your business or key issues come to a grinding halt, you can:

1. Draw Straws
2. Flip a Coin
3. Go Bonkers
4. Call in the Police

5. Work it Out (Recommended)

Working it out, for two people –as those who are married, engaged, courting, living together, or partnered know all too well– means that someone must give up something.

Working it out for three or more might also mean giving stuff up, but more likely –if it’s to be any kind of meaningful reconciliation of divergent thinking– some type of collaborative compromising of interests is generally desirable.

Reaching consensus involves a synergistic process. It means that everyone within the group (team, task force, department, division, company) must agree at least somewhat with the resolve or conclusion or direction reached. Note “somewhat.”

Consensus-seeking can be a very effective leadership/teamwork method of problem solving because it inherently prevents any one person from “winning” a “competition.” Everyone involved must be able to agree that she or he can live with the way things are worked out.

http://bit.ly/c1DUbg

As a device for settling disputes, consensus-seeking flies in the face of traditional American brainwashing to win at all costs. It is (sorry, football fans) not the case that there always needs to be a winner and loser, and that there is no such thing as second place.

For those deep, dark, impulsive, no-constraints,

take-off-the-gloves moments,

go for a referee or umpire.

(You can also always call your Mother-in-law!<) 

For issues that will impact working (or living) together, consensus-seeking leaves all involved parties with some worthy scraps to cling to, allows everyone to save face, and usually prompts a process or procedure or product or production (ah, communicative benefits of alliteration!) to occur that is both measurable and accountable. Because it’s a group-effort pursuit! 

As leader/facilitator, Pfeiffer and Jones suggest in the University Associates Structured Experiences for Human Relations Training, you need to establish consensus-seeking “rules” to help ensure productive results by employing the following guidelines: 

• No averaging,
• No “majority rule” voting.
• No “horse-trading.” 

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You need to influence group members to avoid arguing in order to “win” as an individual. Seek instead the best collective judgment of the group as a whole. Conflict on ideas, solutions, predictions, etc. should be viewed as helping rather than hindering the process.

Problems are best solved when individual group members accept responsibility for both hearing and being heard. Tension-reducing behaviors can be useful as long as meaningful conflict is not “smoothed over” prematurely.

The best results flow from a fusion of information, logic, and emotion (feelings). Need a little coaching help? Call me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

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