Before You Let That Mediocre (Or Poor) Employee Go…
“Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally, and learns about how far to attempt to spring.” – Charles Dudley Warner (Backlog Studies, 1873) The secret to having a top-notch…
READ MOREPlan Your Meetings Or Prepare For Disappointment
“Our lives are not totally random. We make commitments, we cause things to happen.” – Wendy Wasserstein (1990) We’ve said before that you should always have a plan before attending a scheduled meeting. Your plan should include a specific personal goal (e.g., “I will leave the meeting with an agreement…
READ MOREDon’t Work With Your Mouth Full
“Never eat more than you can lift.” – Miss Piggy As we said in Message #444 (“Don’t Befriend Your Business Contacts”), business and friendship don’t easily go together. The same is true of business and food. If you value your health above all (and you probably should), you’ll want to…
READ MOREAre You Too Competitive?
“Man has risen so far above all other species that he competes in ways unique in nature. He fights by means of complicated weapons; he fights for ends remote in time.” – Charles A Lindbergh (Autobiography of Values, 1978) Hollywood would have you believe that successful businessmen are competitive creatures…
READ MOREDon’t Befriend Your Business Contacts
“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.” – Jane Austen (Emma, 1816) I know a couple that has an unusual number of rich and successful “friends.” We circulate in many of the same social circles, but they end up becoming chummy with the billionaires, movie actors,…
READ MORETeach Your Employees To Teach One Another
“To teach is to learn twice over.” – Joseph Joubert (Pensees, 1842) If you spend a lot of time training and retraining your employees, you may be making a big mistake. You can change things for the better by passing on the responsibility for teaching new employees to your students.…
READ MORERate The People In Your Business Life
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby Your success has a lot to do with people: the partners, employees, consultants, and vendors you choose to help you build your dream. If you are careful in choosing the…
READ MOREWhat To Do With Good Employees, Part 3
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” – Albert Einstein (Out of My Later Years, 1950) On Wednesday, we talked about money — how much good employees should be paid. Yesterday, we talked about benefits — both standard and fringe.…
READ MOREWhy Do New Managers Fail?
According to a report I read somewhere, four out of 10 new managers fail in their first year. The primary reason, the report said, is that they are not able to build a good support system. That corresponds to my own experience. When you take over a new job, you…
READ MOREWhat To Do With Good Employees, Part 2
“Enough is as good as a feast.” – John Heywood (Proverbs, 1546) Yesterday, we talked about how to compensate good employees. I argued that you should pay them more slightly more than the fair market rate. Today, Id like to talk about what else you have to do to keep…
READ MOREHow To Work From Anywhere In The World, Part 2
“Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.” – Samuel Johnson (quoted in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, July 20, 1763) If you have the kind of job that allows you to do most of…
READ MOREHow To Work From Anywhere In The World, Part I
Yesterday, we talked about the possibility of working — at least for part of the year — in a place you’d normally go only for vacation. I said I believed that if you played it right, you could have your cake and eat it too — live in a paradise…
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