POST CATEGORY : CEO Leadership

Would Your Parent Make an Ideal Employee?

An interesting topic was brought up in a recent Business Week article, “Should You Hire Your Parents?“.   Different experiences from each side of the debate are stated in the article.    I don’t know about you, but I think hiring your parents could create tension within the family unit.  

Obviously keeping the roles defined between the parent and the  son or daughter is most important.   Daniel Negari, one of the entrepreneurs interviewed for the article, states  that he only refers to his mother at work by her name.   He never uses the term  “mom” or “mother” while in the office environment.  …

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Better Leadership Thru Communication

I haven’t had much experience with different employers or managers but I have had enough interaction to realize it is a difficult responsibility.  Every manager has their own opinions about how to interact with their employees.  Whether their actions, or lack thereof, have positive or negative effects on their employees is a matter of opinion.   Unfortunately, most leaders don’t communicate with their employees enough to know how effective their leadership skills really are.  

Without proper communication, how do you know if you are getting the best performance possible from your employees?  Do they completely understand what is expected of them?    Errors and misunderstandings are avoidable.  …

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Are You Looking For Free Small Business Management Tools?

We are happy to announce the opening of our “Free Tools” section of the Small Business CEO website. Together we have gathered a group of helpful websites that offer free management tools and resources for your small business. Feel free to peruse the selection of freebies available.

There are lots of free ebooks, eguides, templates, business forms, checklists, worksheets, free pdf files, podcasts and white papers to choose from. Our goal is to provide you, our readers, with the most informative tools and resources available to assist you in being strong, effective managers and leaders.…

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Delegation in a Virtual World

In today’s microenterprise world where many times there is only one person actually in the business, delegation takes on a whole new meaning.

Typically even a microenterprise has to perform the same functions as a larger business but they tend to use outside suppliers and partners to perform and manage those functions.

For example: Most of us don’t host our own websites or email or e-newsletter systems, we delegate that to an outside provider.

If we process credit cards we might use Paypal or another merchant account supplier along with our bank.

Almost all of us outsource our legal needs to a local firm or possibly even one of the new online legal firms that provides legal support for a fixed monthly subscription fee.…

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7 Great Reasons to Have an Advisory Board

By Anita Campbell (www.smallbiztrends.com)

We can all benefit from good advice, and that makes advisory boards a hot topic for the savvy CEO and business owner.

In recent years, advisory boards have become an increasingly popular tool for endeavors ranging from Fortune 100 companies to one-person shops. That’s because a Board of Advisors can do more to make your business grow than any other comparable expenditure.

So here’s some advice: set up your own Advisory Board, and here are seven great reasons to do it today.

SEVEN GREAT REASONS TO HAVE AN ADVISORY BOARD:

1. EXPERTISE YOU CAN’T BUY: Advisory Board members typically bring a combination of skill sets that are totally out of reach for most small businesses.…

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Team Building – Four Stages

We all belong to different teams, or groups of two or more people who have some type of common purpose for connecting. It could be for work, church, fun or any of a number of other reasons. What I observe over and over again is teams get frustrated and don’t perform together. I believe the reason why is they don’t have an understanding of the key stages a group or team goes through.

I believe all groups go through these 4 distinct stages in order to get to the point of being effective:

Form – A group has to form, get to know one another, backgrounds, history, why they are on the team, what are the goals of the team and the members, many teams short change this effort.…

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LEADERSHIP: WHAT ARE THE DRIVERS OF BUSINESS GROWTH

In most businesses that have growth plans there are usually some core drivers of that growth. Listed below are some of the key ones that exist in most growth businesses.

Investor Dissatisfaction and Impatience – this drives many a growth plan. Having invested their money, and wanting to get it out with a significant return, investors (often using their Board influence or financing leverage) attempt to drive CEO’s to create and execute growth plans. Sometimes investor dissatisfaction results in the removal and replacement of a poorly performing Founder/CEO by a CEO who can get the job done.

Market Pressure – drives many growth plans.…

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BUSINESS INDICATORS AND WARNING SIGNS

Do you employ a method to determine the pulse of your business? How many times have you asked or heard someone say; “How did we get in this situation”? When you go to the doctor, he usually will ask a lot of symptomatic questions to help him sort out the possibilities, to determine what brought you into his office. Why then couldn’t we use the same approach to managing the future of our businesses? You can easily practice the same fundamental logic.

For many managers the use of the monthly financial statement and the sales backlog are their only yardstick or indicators of how they are doing.…

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CHANGE: GET BETTER OR GET WORSE – THAT’S IT FOR OPTIONS

People and organizations have only two alternatives: get better or get worse, improve or decay. While the thought of status quo might seem comforting, status quo is really decay in sheep’s clothing. Certainly status quo is decay relative to companies who are improving and innovating in the competitive market place. In the personal career arena, status quo is decay relative to those who are improving their career potential.

Take a look at everything that is going on around and in us. Everything seems to be in the process of getting better (growing) or decaying (dying). An example of this is a steel beam, which one might tend to think of as being permanent.…

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