Apr 03 2010
~~~~~~~~~ Visit Hal’s Recent Guest Blog Posts ~~~~~~~~~
Mar 31 2010
It’s the worst it’s been in over two decades. The 2010 Conference Board survey underscores that Americans are not making good choices for themselves and their employers are making even worse ones!
With more than half of the 90% of Americans who are lucky enough to be employed reportedly UNhappy with their employment, we may have an even bigger problem than job creation!
Fortunately, it’s easier as a business owner or manager to do something about unhappy employees than it is to create and pay for new ones, especially when no realistic job creation incentives exist.
Sure, a lot of people are unhappy with their jobs because the economy has cut their pay and benefits off at the knees, and maybe you can’t do anything about that right now — but you can provide more opportunities for employee involvement beginning right this minute.
You can do a better job of engaging and motivating employees beginning right this minute.
You can do a better job of promoting pride of workmanship (no matter what the job, product, service, industry or profession is). When? You got it: beginning right this minute.
Is it worth it? Of course, unless you’re ready to just let go of your top performers without a fight. The longer you delay with pulling these “best people” into the boat, the higher the odds go every day that they will certainly get lured into a bigger, better-run boat.
The longer you wait to throw a tow line to those who are floundering and dog-paddling around or who are trying to stay out of sight by swimming underwater around your boat, the more money you’re wasting everyday paying for what you’re not getting.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but job creation needs government support that’s not coming. The token talk isn’t any more valuable than a handful of ping-pong balls thrown to someone who’s drowning.
So, with that reality in your pocket, the only choice is to do whatever has to be done to pump up sales (note: not saving on utilities . . . pumping up sales; saving expenses does not make money). Increased sales generate increased revenues. By containing the greed factor, increased revenues should lead to increased profits. Increased profits allow you to create new jobs! BINGO! Economic turnaround.
But let’s not forget that the key to all this is for you to initiate an immediate job satisfaction turnaround!
If you can’t save your best people and get your weakest swimmers into life-vests and keep everyone involved with genuine and transparent leadership activities, with teaching by example, with sincere compliments and back pats, you’re in trouble.
If you think this is all unnecessary stuff, you are sadly mistaken. You are choosing fantasy over reality. You are not appreciating that while none of this may be important to you, it’s life or death to other people’s job happiness.
Right now more than half your people are not in the boat. It’s pretty hard to be a leader if you don’t have any followers. Need some help? 302.933.0116. or Hal@BusinessWorks.US — I’m here.
Mar 30 2010
True leaders are transparent throughout their daily conduct. They don’t just open the books, the files, the records, and their agendas to others, they think twice and email once. When you think you need to Bcc someone on an email, think again.
Paint yourself a worst-case scenario. The To people and the Cc people find out about the Bcc person or people, and then where are you? [Up the paddle without a creek!]
Just because we are becoming a less one-on-one social and more tech-social society, is no excuse to hide communications with others. If doing that feels essential, you may want to re-visit the purpose and intent of your message to begin with. In fact, you may want to re-visit your organization’s integrity.
By using email Bcc options as a matter of practice, you not only run the risk of jeopardizing your own credibility, you threaten the credibility of others. And you definitely set a bad precedent. People always think it’s okay to do what the boss does just because the boss does it. [They need some other reason?]
If it’s impossible in your organization to be open and forthright about sensitive issues, it’s equally impossible to be an effective leader. Today’s generation doesn’t really care what your leadership messages have to say as much as they are preoccupied with and focused on what you do, and the examples you set. HOW you transmit a message is as important as the content of the message.
A Bcc user is a buttoned-up suit functioning out of a closed-door back office when people are looking for a frontline, hands-on leader with sleeves rolled up. Routine use of email Bccs sends out clandestine signals. How can others surmise anything trustworthy about someone who is known for constantly communicating behind their backs?
Let’s say you have been charged with solving a customer service problem. Why would you leave the customer out of the communication loop? Afraid of the customer seeing weakness in your organization? Perhaps weakness has more to do with not communicating? [And fear is after all, a choice.]
How about including your customer in the flow of communications so he/she can see and experience your organization’s commitment to resolving the issues at hand? Too risky? What’s the risk of no feedback about the problem-solving efforts? How do those dynamics apply internally?
How would you respond to employees who Bcc you on emails they’re exchanging with their immediate supervisors? Would you confront the practice immediately or let it simmer? Would you share the news with the immediate supervisors?
Would it depend on the circumstances and the people involved? Why? Why wouldn’t this, being a policy issue, be treated as a policy issue? What can be done to prevent the destructive practice from being practiced in the first place?
Mar 27 2010
There comes a time in every economic curve (and especially like now, where the curve has become a plummet) when we must stop the centrifuge that has our backs slammed up against the spinning wall. Nice imagery, huh? Ever feel like that, or am I just imagining things?
We need to step off, collect ourselves, take a deep breath, regain a sense of balance, and re-examine what’s going on with our business. You know, take a look at those activities (or lack of) that we haven’t paid attention to lately because we’ve spun ourselves into a state of dizziness (no I’m not talking about that dizzy state on the West Coast!)
Management gurus seeking creative nirvana in their leadership styles have been urging us all for years to “think outside the box.” I disagree. I’ve watched an endless stream of business ventures think themselves out of the box and into financial quicksand.
Contrary to their brilliant branding message, even Taco Bell needs to think “inside the bun” in order to ensure consistent quality of food ingredients, as well as service. Thinking INSIDE THE BOX is like circling the wagons, shoring up the foundation, strengthening existing connections and relationships, reinforcing the structural integrity of existing products and services, and promoting value-added innovation all at the same time.
It rivals the explosive levels of productivity that surface the day before leaving for vacation (ah, yes, vacations; I remember those).
A truly great and successful, well-known man whose memoir I’m presently writing, always says (rather authoritatively): “You can’t do two things at once!”
I’m thinking about staring so hard out the windshield that you spill the coffee — or worse, reaching to balance the coffee and crashing into the car in front of you. Well, when it comes to business ownership and management, the expression is equally true. Thinking OUTSIDE the box takes you too far away from what you need to be focused on when cashflow is dwindling.
I’ve often noted here that the best way to do this is with http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw which I guarantee will help you stay focused on what’s important. The bottom line is that you REALLY need to not leave home without it and the “it” is the part about first making sure your home is safely protected, that some one’s around to keep an eye on it for you, that mail and messages will get forwarded or saved.
Thinking OUTSIDE the box requires that INSIDE-the-box operations are safe and sound and moving forward without you having to risk divided attention. It’s simple when you start with INTROSPECTION.
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!
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Mar 25 2010
Selfish . . . as in Piggy? No . . . as in oriented toward your SELF!
You can’t control government except at election time. You can’t control irate customers who give you fits trying to nickle and dime you at every turn. You can’t control what goes on behind your back unless you never turn your back. You can’t control a lot of people and situations in your business and personal life. But you CAN control YOU!
What you say and think and do is entirely your choice, and entirely under your control. (If you doubt this and are ready to shoot back examples to the contrary, examine your examples. Odds are 100 out of 100 that you made a conscious or unconscious choice to set yourself up to not have a choice, but -ALWAYS – there is or was a choice. Take advantage of how you can use that information now, today!)
HOW you respond to someone or something that’s out of your control is within your control.
So stop choosing to think that everyone else is pushing your button. No one can reach inside your brain and control how you think.
The great motivational theory and studies psychologist Abraham Maslow focused his attention on the path and process of self-actualization. In addition to using their own intellects and talents, Maslow said that self-actualizing people take responsibility for others as well as themselves and (according to James and Jongeward in their classic book, Born To Win), “have a childlike capacity for awareness and pleasure.”
The authors proceed to note that “these individuals customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside themselves which enlists much of their energies … they work within a framework of values that are broad and not petty, universal and not local, and in terms of a century rather than a moment … have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.”
If you’ve let outside influences under your skin, it may be time to appreciate more what you already have in life and to take stock in whether those around you are contributing to your growth and happiness, and to the growth and success of your business — or are they detracting from it?
Exerting your own sense of self-actualization can influence others to change negative thoughts and behaviors and directions, but — more importantly — it will serve to boost your own rockets and reinforce that you’re not such a bad “gal” or “guy” after all.
You have enormous powers to turn things around when you decide to consistently apply your strengths to what’s in your face or on your plate. Keep outside influences outside.
Draw instead from your own inner strength and the inner strength of your business, and from those who live inside your inner circle. Making decisions and conducting yourself from inside yourself is a better, happier, healthier choice every time.
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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.
Mar 24 2010
GOVERNMENT is muscling entrepreneurs into incipient bankruptcy with this healthcare plan that — contrary to what the spin has been — does absolutely NOT pass along tax credit to all. In fact, 88% (maybe more) of America’s 29,000,000+ small businesses will get ZERO healthcare plan-related tax credit! So, do the math: “Maybe 12%” will get some tax credit.
29 MILLION? Yes, that includes the 23 million self-employed. They are indeed small businesses by any rational person’s definition, and certainly by any textbook definition, and most assuredly by any measure of reality.
The healthcare plan forces downward pressure on wages, when we’re at a point in time, facing the prospects of total economic demise, that the exact opposite is what should be happening. Downward pressure on wages inhibits business growth and strangleholds small businesses’ abilities to create jobs.
SMALL BUSINESS will end up bearing the burden of increased insurance premium costs. Insurance companies will now pass on to small businesses the increased costs of government payments they must make. Insurance companies are not stupid. They will simply turn around and stick it to small business . . . camouflaged perhaps, but it will not not happen!
Heaven knows we need to create jobs. And heaven also knows job creation will never come from corporate giants or from incompetent, close-minded market government agencies like the US Postal Service.
Yet, small business is the last and really only hope for job creation. Job creation is the only meaningful and realistic economic stimulus solution in America’s economy. Yet we are being trapped in a vicious circle of reckless spending partisan-politics that has no clue about the value of free market price competition and tax incentives with teeth!
Instead, our no-business-experience leadership looks forlornly to the corporate and government executives who run the US Small Business Administration for the kinds of help they are simply not capable of providing.
Most small business owners and entrepreneurs know how to solve problems quickly and know how to stimulate cash-flow and open new revenue streams, how to build a competitive environment and make it be productive. Give them a chance!
Mar 22 2010
Psychologists tell us it’s a pretty safe bet that a sale is made or broken in the first 10 seconds. The first make-or-break second of the first 10 seconds is the impression made by your smile… ü
So maybe it’s a good time to run to the mirror and evaluate. Is yours: Genuine? Fake? Masking upset? Token? Mocking? Ambivalent? A slight grin? A mouthful of teeth and gums? A lecherous drool?
You needn’t be a toothpaste commercial, shooting forth little light beams every time you open your mouth anymore than your handshakes need to break bones. Let authenticity be your guide.
Do you ever find yourself thinking that you can put one over on someone because you’re on the telephone? After all, the other person can’t see your face so you can scowl all you want, chew gum, eat pretzels, rattle ice cubes, clack your teeth, pick your nose, or tap on your keyboard . . . and “who knew?”
Ah, but surely you can hear me if I do those things to youon the phone; why would you imagine others can’t pick up dumb and disgusting noises or subconscious vocal (er, ah, uh, um, duh, uh-huh, ahem, awk!) signals from you?
Can we hear each other smiling?Of course. We can also hear a ton of other emotions when the importance of the call warrants careful attention, and probably half a ton even when the call’s a casual one. How many times have you spoken with a total stranger and known immediately that the person has a cold, or is upset, or preoccupied, or in a hurry? How about when it’s someone you know well?
We listen with “selective perception.” Like the artist walking into a crowded party focused on where the host hung her artwork, or the alcoholic who nods and smiles his way along the shortest straight line route to the bar, or the recently downsized administrator searching out prospective employer-types to impress. The same selective perception. We perceive what we want to perceive and we pick out or select the words and tone of voice and attitude we want to hear.
In fact, depending on who’s on the other end, we may “work the room” so to speak in an effort to prompt those desired words and tone and attitude. A little light humor can do the job. Sometimes a sob or two. Can you tell when someone is trying these ploys? Manipulation is not authenticity.
Successful leaders use selective perception too, but they don’t limit input when it serves a purpose; in fact, they encourage it. There’s a song from the ’70s by the group, “YES,” that I’ve always liked with the line, “Don’t surround yourself with your self!”
Unprofessional salespeople who lack vision tend to do this. Being too caught up with or full of themselves loses sales. Weak, dillusional leaders often do it to mask their insecurities until discovery unravels the truth of their missions.
If you are a good leader, you are selling constantly because it’s your job to motivate others to want to achieve what you need them to do using strategic approaches that they contribute to. If you’re a good salesperson, you recognize the importance of providing effective leadership for your customers and the communities you serve.
And –VOILA!– it all starts with a real, smile-like-you-mean-it smile… ü
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!
Mar 21 2010
There may never have been a better time than now, for small business owners, operators and managers to rise up and defend the businesses they’re married to, to take hold of the entrepreneurial leadership that America’s government hasn’t even an inkling about how to make work.
We’re promised leadership transparency and get instead closed doors.
We’re assured of job creation incentives and get instead “much ado about nothing.” Mountains of utterly useless government paperwork clog our channels of communication and threaten our existences as free market competitive entities.
The government wants to tax and spend and provide all the necessary infrastructure to gain total and complete control of our businesses and industries, our families and our personal lives. [This is not exaggerated. Look carefully at what’s been happening every day.]
American business owners want an end to taxation without representation. Small business owners want an end to spending money that doesn’t exist, no matter how great the cause. Business owners do not want the government running businesses; they want government to provide infrastructure tools for use by small businesses to create jobs and economic turnaround opportunities. They want to keep their inalienable rights to freedom and independence.
America’s federal government has run amuck. It is using today’s lame excuse for a healthcare bill as a Trojan Horse to–once positioned inside the walls of democracy–unleash a flood of controls designed to pursue their mission to usher in socialism.
Socialism does not work, and will not work. It has never worked.
And until what I am firmly convinced is our nation’s corrupt union leadership (especially teacher and automaker unions) and until naive, ideological arts and tree-hugger communities are willing to put aside their new-found, Obama-led arrogance long enough to face reality, we as a nation are in deep trouble.
So why address all this political mess in a blog for small business owners and entrepreneurial leaders?
Because it is WE who are on the line here. It is WE who hold the opportunity to reverse the reckless spending and reckless mind-games being foisted upon us. It is WE who need to rise up and restore balance and strength to our crumbling economy.
No, these are not just words. These are actions that each of us needs to take and pledge to work for. Our government, as it has come to exist in this past year, no longer represents “WE the people.”
If any of us with small businesses spent money we didn’t have as mindlessly as the federal government has been doing and continues to do, we would be out of business . . . exactly where America is headed.
We are on a runaway train, being driven by a totally-inexperienced group of incompetent (seemingly “possessed” say some) politicians who are intent on taking us all directly over the socialism cliff into Marxism waiting eagerly below. And, God forbid that should ever take place.
The only way to ensure the survival of democracy bolstered by its capitalistic roots that established the US as the world’s one-time strongest nation, and be able to be in the position to best help others, is to provide small businesses with real (not token) tools to lead us forward once again.
This can only happen when each small business owner takes an active role this November in voting out those who think it’s more important to “taxdollar-bailout” corporate giants than to put meaningful job creation tax incentives in small business.
Realize here that we have representatives who are more concerned with their empty, small-business-killing healthcare plan than with reducing unemployment rates enough to allow people to pay for the insurance coverage they’ll need to have, to avoid getting fined with amounts they have no ability to pay, because they’re unemployed. Oh, is that not logical or something?
We need Congressional Representatives and Senators who are not afraid to stand shoulder to shoulder with small business, who will foster the spirit of knowledgeable, experienced, and open leadership we so sorely lack.
We need small business leadership with the vision to restore the sovereignty and credibility of America that generations before us worked so diligently and hard to preserve.
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!
Mar 18 2010
“Fishing off company docks,” as Grandpa used to call it, is a choice. Don’t choose it!
If you’re not in a home business and married to your partner, there is no excuse big enough to allow room for a sex relationship in your business no matter how discreet you think you can be, no matter how tempting a person or situation is, no matter what any one’s marital status is.
It will come back to bite you in the butt and wreck your business. Guaranteed!
No, I don’t pretend to be a preacher or a moralist. Nor am I a prude or an embittered, failed religious fanatic. I have been a personal and professional growth and development counselor to many top business executives and many physicians.
I have seen and “heard confession” of at least a hundred instances of boss and associate or boss and employee sex relationships at work, and every single one of them ultimately destroyed the business or medical practice. No exceptions.
No matter how worked up the thinking about it gets, sex on the desk is simply not worth it. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal transformed societal acceptance levels, with of course the help of mainstream media which found it preferable to capitulate and sanction the offenses (rather than bite the Presidential hand that fed them . . . Hmmm, sound familiar?).
Bill Clinton’s indiscretions don’t make the practice of sex in the office (ANY office) an “okay” thing.
It’s unfortunate that Clinton’s gross violation of public trust and personal morals will be his only truly memorable contribution to go down in the Presidential legacy history books. The Brothers Kennedy and others, as past events come to light, were apparently no better behaved — just had the wherewithal to stall off public awareness for a few decades.
The sexual pursuits of employee underlings follow the perceived power of leaders . . . and it’s easy for business leader (the more powerful, the easier) to take sexual advantage of an employee . . . even the owner of a small retail store is not exempt.
The only thing that keeps business owners above the fray is the active recognition that all behavior is a choice, and that sex at work is a bad choice in every instance. Why? Because it stands to cost the business and the owner (as well as the magnetized employee!) deeply and irrevocably.
The risk of lifelong-haunting business failure far outweighs the moments of indiscretion. Entrepreneurs, we need to remember, take only reasonable risks. Leave the mixing of sexlife with worklife to Hollywood where morals don’t exist anyway, and where risk-taking is a fictional pursuit.
Odds are you have spent enormous energy and untold amounts of time and money to anchor your business in reality. You deserve to keep it there.
Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!
Mar 17 2010
There is no career more demanding of thick skin than that of a writer. Because everyone thinks they can write (which is of course a massive misconception), writers live in a breeding ground of rejection and criticism. They learn how to take it in. They learn to not take it personally, to process the thinking behind it, and to make it be constructive.
But most people in other careers will cry, or bitch, or stomp their foot, or kick the dog, or return with a gun. Unfortunately, many of those who dish it out, rarely concern themselves with sensitivities on the receiving end.
Business and professional practice owners and managers who believe they are the best at what they do (that’s like what? 99.7%?) tend to have massive egocentric personalities. Many think they know it all. They seldom concern themselves with the feelings of those they criticize. And some simply don’t care what others think or feel.
The most successful bosses are neither tyrants nor mollycoddlers. They are the ones who save critical comments for behind closed doors, who start and end with sincere compliments, who explain themselves and their rationales, who ask questions about why something was said or done in a way they don’t like (just in case they might possibly be wrong in their assumptions), and then who make a major point of criticizing the behavior involved, not the person involved.
Remember that asking someone “Why” something happened is never ever as useful or important as asking “How” something happened — or better yet — “How can we prevent this type of thing from happening in the future?”
Why not “Why?” Because asking someone “Why?” simply sets up getting an excuse for an answer. “Why were you late again today?” will get you “My car broke down, my dog ate my sock” kinds of replies.
Asking “How?” gets you real solutions because it forces an assessment of the process involved in the screw-up. Once we know HOW something went wrong, it’s easier to fix it. “How?” is even more productive when it’s followed by a pointed request such as: “Can you please give me a bullet list by noon (or the end of the day) with the three steps that need to be taken (or that you need to take) that will help us eliminate this problem altogether?”
Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Blog emails free via RSS feed, $1/mo Amazon Kindle. GRANDPARENT Gift? http://bit.ly/3nDlGF
