We are experiencing an embarrassment of riches in this country . . . sort of. The rate of unemployment in 2018 was just 3.9%. To find a lower rate than that, you’d have to go all the way back to 1969 when it was 3.5%. Good for employees, but not so good for employers. Effectively,
“We respond to the environments we’re in. If you get the environment right, you get the right behavior.”
Keynote speaker and bestselling author, Simon Sinek, tells a story about an experience he had at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas. Sinek had stopped at the lobby coffee bar for a cup of coffee, and there he met a barista who was charming, engaging, funny, and just a joy to be with. Sinek
Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others.
Strong leadership is crucial to any organization. Whether we’re talking about a commercial enterprise, a civic group, a church congregation, or a military unit, strong leadership is key to its success. But leadership is not a one-size-fits-all proposition . . . there are lots of commonly recognized leadership styles, so it stands to reason that
6 Ways to Reduce Turnover and Keep Your Best People on the Job
Employee turnover is a fact of life. It’s inevitable. While we’d like to minimize it . . . particularly among out best employees . . . we can never eliminate it entirely. And that’s a good thing. From time to time, we need new people who bring fresh thinking and new ideas. Still, we want
Exit interviews: the gold standard for determining how satisfied (or dissatisfied) your workforce is.
Exit interviews are an incredibly effective HR tool that can help you assess the health of your organization. Yet in many companies, it’s a tool that is used sparingly or not at all. Or it’s used in such a perfunctory manner that it doesn’t really produce any useful information. Why? Because it takes time and
“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
Entrepreneurs are a strange breed and largely misunderstood. Some people believe that all small independent businesses are automatically entrepreneurial. Not true. Many small businesses just plod along, day after day, following whatever formula got them to where they are, and never straying into new or uncharted territory. The companion belief is that entrepreneurs don’t exist
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
In their book, “The CEO Next Door,” consultants Elena Botelho and Kim Powell talk about “The 4 behaviors that transform ordinary people into world-class leaders.” They base their findings on studies of over 2600 leaders. While any individual leader may display a wide range of behaviors, Botelho and Powell argue that there are just four
“Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are common. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are highly, highly overvalued. Execution is all that matters.”
We were recently at a meeting where several of the people there started talking about a book they had read, “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” written by three top executives of the FranklinCovey Company . . . Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, and Sean Covey (son of Stephen Covey, who was a founder of the FranklinCovey
“Success seems largely to be a matter of hanging on after the others let go.”
Let’s talk about Bill Gross, the serial entrepreneur. As it turns out, there’s also Bill Gross the billionaire investor, but that’s not who we want to talk about. We want to talk about the other guy. The entrepreneur. This Bill Gross has personally started over 100 companies, and more than 40 of those have either
“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?
