Management

Management And the Art of Saying No

August 27, 2012

Do you recognize this tactic? I was at the Apple Latin America headquarters in 1984 for an appointment with Hector Saldana, general manager. I arrived on time for a meeting, Hector came out of his office and welcomed me, walked me to the place to get coffee, and left me in a conference room, promising [...]

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Displacement: A Critical Small Biz Factor We Never Acknowledge

July 26, 2012

Displacement: In the real world of small business, everything you do is something else you can’t do. Understanding displacement is vital for business planning, vital for growing a business, vital for small and medium business in particular. Consider the picture here, marbles dropping into a full glass of water. The water comes splashing out of [...]

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Hooray the Late ’60s Are Finally Winning

July 19, 2012

No surprise to me: Alexandra Levit reports on Amex OPEN that big-company CEOs are “abandoning command and control.” IBM studied more than 1,700 chief executive officers from 64 countries and 18 industries. Of course. Look around. You’ll see complaining sometimes about alleged millennials, but all they’re doing is wanting people to care what they think. [...]

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5 Traits of A Great Startup CEO

July 18, 2012

I’ve been meaning to post about Jason Baptiste’s 14 Ways To Be A Great Startup CEO for a while now. With so much myth and misunderstanding slung around the web as advice on entrepreneurship, it’s unusual to see 14 good points in a row on this topic. I’m highlighting my five favorites here, but all 14 are [...]

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5 Hard Lessons Related to Firing Somebody

February 13, 2012

So you start your business, and you get it going, and growing. If you have employees, it’s likely you’re going to have to deal with firing somebody. Here are my some of my thoughts (based on actual experience; not theoretical) on that subject. Having to fire somebody who’s been trying hard and failing is the [...]

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3 Questions Business Owners Need to Ask About Employee Expenses

February 9, 2012

Do you own a business? Do you run a business? Then I recommend you follow me through this simple math and some reasonable conclusions. Assume you have a person making a $50,000 gross salary. Assume their true cost — including health insurance, overhead, work space, computers, Internet, electric power, payroll taxes, etc. — is $80,000. That [...]

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A Potentially Creative Management Team Assessment Idea

December 15, 2011

Whether you’re a football fan or not, I suggest you take a quick look at NFL: The Giants on the Giants on WSJ.com today. And that’s especially if you’re running a business, or working on a business team. And even more so if you’ve heard about the 360 methodology for polling teams – business teams [...]

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Brace Yourself. Success Brings Detractors.

September 12, 2011

It’s funny — well, maybe annoying is a better word — how one of the so-called trappings of success is criticism. Get up in front of a crowd to speak, launch a website, develop and launch a product, start a business, and you’re in front of people. And that means you open yourself up to [...]

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Never Do a Contract When a Letter Will Do

September 6, 2011

I admit I probably shouldn’t be posting this because I’m not an attorney, so I don’t give legal advice. This is just anecdotal, based on what I’ve seen in my business experience. Consult your attorney. I worked for years with a smart, honest business lawyer who — well, let me get to that later in [...]

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