The recent collapse of Washington Mutual Bank and the near collapse of the entire financial infrastructure in the country has underscored the need to be prepared in every way. Obviously, you should be minimizing your debt, maximizing savings and setting some food and money aside to ride out the coming hard times. Most economists believe [...]
Following this link to the Harvard Business Review post by Umair Haque entitled “How To Build A Next Gen Business.” This is tightly written and very insightful. It’s worth your time and consideration.
I talked recently to a friend in another state who’s business just filed for bankruptcy. After 28 years in business, always profitable and always successful, they were going under. About 3 years ago they decided they needed to grow their business more rapidly, and went looking for the shortest path to that goal. That path [...]
I heard part of an interview the other day with a woman (I wish I knew her name, but I came into the interview late and left early) speaking about generation Y and the their view of how the work environment ought to be. She indicated they want a fun environment that is flexible in [...]
22 Sep
Posted by awebb as Management
I think we spend entirely too much time telling people what to do in our businesses. Doesn’t that always seem to be the case? Do this. Don’t do that. Don’t forget to get this done. Much of our communication with our employees follows that pattern. The problem with that is, it’s absolutely ineffective. From [...]
I marvel at the lengths our government will go to on most things. This whole financial institution bailout has really got my motor running. Here’s how I see it. The banks, seeing real estate prices skyrocketing wanted their piece of the action. In order to compete with other banks, they lowered rates, relaxed age-old lending [...]
I think more often than not we end up treating the symptoms and not the problem. You say, “I have a headache.” My first response is, “Do you want an aspirin?” In that scenario, we’re treating the symptom (the headache) and not the problem that’s causing the headache (poor vision, for example.) When we treat [...]
In our “things are not exactly as they seem file,” I know a fellow in another state who had an interesting (negative) turn of event at his place of employment. My friend is a commission salesman who has spent the last three years building a large and lucrative client base. A few weeks ago [...]
The internet has taken social networking to a whole new level. Today there are websites devoted to nothing else. Social-networking has become the catch-phrase of the new millenium. While most networking seems to be done in a spirit of furthering your career, I think there’s an aspect to networking far more valuable than that which [...]
I have done business with all types of people in my career. Some I enjoyed doing business with, some not. As I reflect on those that I found frustrating to deal with, one theme consistently runs through all of them: I never felt confident I knew what they were saying. Some people are in-your-face blunt. [...]