A regular incentive program (or bonus) can be an excellent mechanism to redistribute the wealth a company retains in the good years and remain solvent in less successful ones. Ad hoc incentives can also be used to reward above-and-beyond performance. Unfortunately, too often the enthusiasm around the first surprise reward quickly morphs into entitlement on… Read more »
Business Management Blog
Take The Stress Out Of Compensation
Few business leaders are immune to the anxiety and discomfort that go along with discussions of compensation. What we hear: “They think the bonus is a guaranteed part of their pay. It’s entitlement!” “They expect to be gifted equity for time served.” “They brought me an internet search that indicated they were 50% underpaid. That… Read more »
Discover Your Areas of Working Genius
Patrick Lencioni and his team at The Table Group have developed a 10-minute online assessment called The 6 Types of Working Genius. The premise is that everyone has work activities that give them joy and energy and others that don’t. If they do the former kind of activity most of the time, they love their… Read more »
7 Tips to Avoid Procrastination
Procrastination is a form of self-regulation failure that involves prioritizing short-term mood repair over the long-term pursuit of intended actions (Sirois & Pychyl, 2013). Basically, it’s more fun to watch TV or read a book than to clean the toilet. At least, in the moment. The problem is that the toilet isn’t going to clean… Read more »
The Trouble with Work from Home
Switching from the office to work from home (WFH) can have a significant positive impact on your wellbeing. Daniel Kahneman’s research showed that commuting can be the single largest source of dissatisfaction in a person’s life. When the routine of rushing to get out the door, fighting traffic, and settling into the office is replaced… Read more »
Socially Distanced Team Building
Now that so many teams are remote (intentionally or not), it can be tough to reinforce company culture. After all, there isn’t a lot of bumping into one another. Good team building activities should be inclusive, voluntary, and during work hours. We asked our clients what they’ve been doing to keep the fun and culture… Read more »
Developing People Through Talent Assessment
In Good to Great, Jim Collins taught us that we need to get the right people in the right seats. In small business, the seats are fairly standard: President, General Manager, Sales Manager, Operations Manager, Finance Manger…There are industry-specific variations on this theme but those five titles represent the foundational core to most businesses with… Read more »
The After-Action Review
An After-Action Review (AAR), sometimes referred to as a project post-mortem, is a review of past performance to glean lessons that can be applied to future situations. Ideally, those learnings are then implemented within the organization as part of a continuous improvement effort. Ineffective AARs devolve into blame circles instead of being future oriented, focus… Read more »
The Fundamental Attribution Error
The Fundamental Attribution Error is a concept in psychology where one attributes others’ actions to their personality or character, while attributing the cause of one’s own actions to the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words, if I do something wrong, I couldn’t help it. If you do something wrong, you could’ve prevented it…. Read more »
Leadership in Trying Times
Funny enough, I must have missed the MBA class on how to navigate a global pandemic because I had the chickenpox (true story). But most of the small business leaders we work with didn’t do an MBA at all. They earned their success by getting their hands dirty, which is currently not recommended by the… Read more »