Monthly Archives: January 2010

Business Development

Customer Advisory Boards are a great source of information about your market and your business. Their advice is more valuable than any management consultant's. They provide real world counsel on what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and most important -how to stay competitive. After all, they're the customer. They're the one's who buy your stuff. Here's how to use your Customer Advisory Board for best results. 1. Make it win-win. As much as they might like ...

It’s that time of year again: the time of holiday parties, Christmas cards to write, shopping to do (even online…at work!), vacations, family commitments, and more stress. There are ways that we as leaders can counteract all of the distractions and stress and help people be as productive now as at any time of the year.

Last month, I wrote about positioning your company to attract and keep top performers. One very effective way to do both is to compensate your key employees with equity. Performance pay has become a critical factor in keeping top talent; combine it with a sense of ownership and a stake in the future of the business, and you've got a powerful set of incentives. That is what equity does. The basic theory behind equity compensation is simple: generously pay your people in ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher said "The primary wisdom is intuition." It is not just a theory, it is part of who we are. Without training we can happen upon it occasionally and we usually like the results when we follow our intuition. What would happen if we learned to tap into our own innate intuition on a daily basis? Why don't we? As Carl Jung said "intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason." It ...

Working at home, when you have small kids is possible, but there are some things you need to think about.

Eleanor Valentine and Gary Yardley do basically the same job in an engineering company. They are both designers working on the same project and the Vice President has just made an announcement that special bonuses will be paid to employees making the best contribution in their field of expertise. The problem is, it's difficult to differentiate between Elly's work and Gary's work because they interact so closely. This example demonstrates a few things about reward and recog...

Why do smart people fail? Why people who more social succeed while those with merely a moderate IQ considerably fail?

Tips to help the work-at-home mom achieve the ideal work and family balance.