Brad and I wrote a little while back about wearing headphones at the office. He noticed I was wearing them more often and we had some issues when he would try to get my attention. So we shared about it on LinkedIn, and it generated a storm of comments from people with polar opposite views — either they…
Missing deadlines is a common occurrence in the world of small business. No one is to blame (or everyone is to blame) and there are no real consequences — until the owner wakes up one morning and says, “Hey, weren’t we supposed to be finished with this project by now? What happened?” There are plenty…
The world of podcasting is exploding. Every day, smart people put up excellent material that informs and, if we’re lucky, entertains. Interviews with the best and the brightest are available on practically any subject, in any field. Whatever your interest, there is a podcast out there to engage and enlighten you. But if you’ve never listened to…
You’ve probably heard a lot lately about this idea of employee engagement. There are some scary statistics being thrown around; two-thirds of workers are less than fully engaged in their jobs (Aon Hewitt, 2013) with 18% “actively disengaged” (Gallup, 2013). I know when I read those stats I think, “Well, big businesses are like that….
Since switching from my spiral notebook to an iPad, I’ve been working to create a workflow that enables me to take notes on my iPad during meetings, and then make use of them everywhere. The iPad is really the perfect meeting companion. I always felt weird taking notes on a laptop — the screen creates such…
The most important part of any email is the subject line. This is the part of the email that will almost surely be read, often many times. It, more than anything else, determines what the receivers will do with your email. Interesting subject lines get opened. Vague or ridiculous subject lines may get trashed or…
When you have a project you really need to get out by the end of the day, what do you do? Shut the office door, set the phone to DND, close your browser and focus on that one thing? Probably not, even though you know that switching from project to project reduces your productivity, not…
With all the news (positive and negative) spinning around us these days, some of us feel like we are in the eye of a hurricane. Some business owners are cautious, to the point of being scared. They are frozen, unable to move as their business gets weaker and weaker. Other business owners are thriving despite…
Many of you have just watched the Super Bowl, one of the most popular sporting events in America and around the world. It pits top teams with extraordinary athletes against one another in an epic match-up of strength against strength. In Sunday night’s game, player after player said their whole season came down to that…
If your business survived 2009, good job! As business advisors whose mission is to help businesses grow, we never thought there would be a day when we would congratulate business owners for just surviving. But 2009 was tough! We’ll give you that. Some of us had to make radical changes to our businesses in 2009,…