If your company has successfully navigated the challenges of “startup” and “early stage development,” and if it has arrived at a place where it is relatively stable and has market recognition, you can expect would-be buyers to start sniffing around, trying to determine if you’re interested in selling. Some entrepreneurs will start and sell many
“The real job of leadership is not to take charge. The real job of leadership is to take care of the people in our charge.”
As company owners, if we want to grow our enterprise into something that has size, depth, staying power, and value, we can’t do it alone. We need a team to help us . . . a team of leaders. But how do we develop our team? How do we select who will be on it?
Turnover can be good or bad. When we’re talking about inventory, turnover is very good. But when we’re talking about employees, turnover is bad. Very, very bad.
Employee turnover is a serious matter. And it’s a very expensive matter. It affects everything -profitability, productivity, customer service, quality control, and more. Yet too many of us treat turnover as an unavoidable annoyance. It’s true that some turnover is a good thing. From time to time, we need to weed out the people who
The Power of “I Don’t Know”
Sir Ken Robinson is an expert on education. learning, and creativity. He tells a story about once having served on a panel of speakers that included the Dalai Lama. During a Q&A session, the Dalai Lama was asked a question that he didn’t answer right away. After a long silence, the Dalai Lama finally responded,
“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?'”
We all talk about outstanding customer service, and many of us even claim to deliver it, but do we really? Too much of what we call customer service is really an attempt to mollify a customer after we’ve screwed up in some way . . . a restaurant may give a customer a free dessert
“It’s important to have a sound idea, but the really important thing is the implementation.”
Picture this. You’re in a meeting to discuss a particular operating problem you need to solve. The group discusses several possible solutions, and finally settles on the one that seems most likely to succeed. Then the leader of the group says, “Good work gang! I think we’re on the right track here,” and adjourns the
“Change is good; you go first.”
Jim Hemerling is an author and a senior partner/managing director at the famed Boston Consulting Group. One of his particular areas of expertise is change management, so he must be a very busy guy these days because there’s a lot of change to manage. Change is coming at us rapidly, and it’s accelerating. He recently
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
The Loyola Ramblers were the “Cinderella” team of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament. True, they didn’t win the championship, but for a team that many thought couldn’t win their Missouri Valley Conference, making it all the way to the Final Four was an incredible feat. On the surface, it may seem that there aren’t any
14 Great Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask
A while ago, I stumbled across an article in Inc. magazine entitled “100 great questions every entrepreneur should ask.” The questions were submitted by a variety of business leaders and business writers, and while all were pretty good, predictably, some were better than others. So I picked out a few that I thought were particularly
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.
Entrepreneurs often have a tough time delegating effectively. After all, the company is their baby. They gave it life and steered it through its formative years. They know how to press all the important buttons and pull all the essential levers better than anyone else. But if they continue to refuse access to those buttons
