The research is clear. There are primarily six reasons people work and they affect an employee’s performance. Three of these reasons help improve performance; play, purpose and potential. Three of these reasons actually reduce performance; emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia.1 Here is an example. Most sales people are motivated by money to some degree. But now we understand we have to learn a bit more about them to discover why they are motivated by money. For example; is it […]

It’s inevitable. Changing technology, changing customer needs, and changing competition are just a few of the things that cause upheaval in your business. What can you do as a leader to minimize the disruption? First understand what is happening to your employees. Begin by thinking of a time when you suddenly found out something significant as going to change. What was your initial reaction? How did you feel? How long did it take before you were able to stop thinking […]

People sometimes miss a key part of the strategic plan to revenue growth; developing employees to take on broader responsibilities. Marketing and sales are essential for sure, but unless you are ready to scale up they won’t achieve the result you want. In fact, I have seen it happen more than once that someone landed a new sale or customer only to lose it immediately because they couldn’t deliver the quality of service expected. I recently met a business owner […]

Tight Job Market Poses Challenges for Small Business Owners Have you noticed? Everywhere I go there are signs for “Help Wanted”. The job ads are plentiful. People are hiring. What does this mean for a small business owner who relies on people for production or customer service? The competition for workers is heating up. When this happens, smaller companies struggle more than larger companies. Smaller companies have more difficulty offering the same salary and benefits that larger businesses can offer. […]

The stick is viewed as a control method of getting employees to do what you need. The idea is that if you drive them with fear of consequences they will not want to deviate and therefore, will do as told. Which is true…as long as you are standing over them holding the stick; akin to watching them all the time. The carrot is viewed as the method that entices employees with rewards; which works; as long as the rewards keep […]

There are three reasons why an employee won’t do something. It’s important to know which of the three is affecting your employee because the solution is different for each reason. There is a common mis-conception: “If I tell people what to do they should just do it”. Sorry, it doesn’t quite work that way some of the time. #1 They Don’t Know How Your employee won’t do things the way you want if they really don’t know how. The challenge […]

Most entrepreneurs grow their business by teaching each new employee how they do things; serve the customer; record transactions; and complete the day.  Of course, this is really the only way to start your growth; when you add the first employee it makes sense. But what happens when you add the second person?  Then a third?  Do you teach them yourselves?  Most people have one of their experienced employees teach the new employee so they can take one major task […]