The Stages of Growth clarifies the optimal number of managers and leaders for a business. This blog post shows what that ideal number looks like across the seven Stages of Growth. This framework serves as the ideal for businesses to follow, with the management and leadership teams growing in proportion to the needs of the organization. In reality, however, many leaders miss these transitions.
The Position Role Sheet is a management tool that organizes the work through Positions, Roles, and Types of Work. It is a fundamental way to accomplish the goal of first organizing the work before organizing the people doing the work. As a building block for departments of all sizes, Position Role Sheets break down the roles and responsibilities of each position within a department.
This natural tendency to focus on the immediate needs of one’s department can work against the success of the enterprise. Due to daily challenges, needs, and opportunities, departments can become self-focused and lose sight of the big picture. The outcomes of this silo mentality are a lack of cooperation and hoarding of information. What works for one department might make things difficult for another. Departments begin to compete for resources without understanding or even caring about the needs of the enterprise.
Dr. W. Edward Deming is recognized as the father of the modern Quality Movement that ignited new ideas and focused energy on process improvement. He contributed to Japan’s economic recovery after World War II, largely through his influence over manufacturing processes.
Dr. Deming was a champion of systems and processes. At one point, he made this poignant statement: “If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.”
Employee retention is a hot topic for small business owners. How do you keep your best talent? The time and effort required to find the right people is no small matter. With so many things vying for your attention, you need to know that you can depend on your best employees.
If money were no object, the solution would be simple. In the real world, though, resources are limited. Fortunately, there are things besides money that can help with employee retention.
Running a profitable business is a big challenge. Fifty percent of businesses started in the U.S. fail within the first 5 years. Why? Because they are unable to create a profitable business model.
While there are many different factors that play into running a profitable business, in this article, we’re going to focus on just one simple fact: the difference between revenue and profit. The distinction matters, and it helps immensely if the entire team has the same understanding of what profit is.
When you bring on a new employee to your team, the first few weeks are extremely important. Those initial impressions and moments can shape the entire trajectory of that person’s tenure with the company—whether it’s brief or lengthy, good or bad, mutually beneficial or filled with conflict.
Employers aren’t likely to skip foundational things with a new employee, like setting up their computer or giving them a copy of the employee handbook. There are other steps, though—steps often overlooked—that are just as critical to setting the stage for an employee’s success.
Do you feel frustrated because your employees aren’t taking ownership of their work? Does it seem like you have to constantly send reminders and follow-up with your employees before a task is completed?
If so, you’re not alone. Employee accountability is a big issue for business owners. Ideally, every person who is hired to join a company will take full responsibility for his or her work and even go above and beyond when the occasion requires. The reality, though, is often different. It’s not uncommon for business owners to struggle with getting employees to fulfill their responsibilities.
Finding and hiring good employees has always been a challenge for business owners, but it’s especially true today. The labor market is tight, leading to higher expectations from employees for special perks or accommodations, and less incentive to stay. Even a successful company that is well-run and has a healthy workplace environment can find it difficult to retain employees.
Needless to say, a great deal of time and effort go into hiring a new employee, which makes the question of how to find good people—people who are the right fit for a company—more pressing than ever. In this article, we’ll share three hiring tips that can be used to help ensure that each new employee is a good fit for the team.
Gallup recently reported that the percentage of engaged workers in the U.S. in 2021 was just over one-third (34%), and that a full 16% of employees were actively disengaged in their work and workplace. This marks a decline from 2020, and the first decline in more than a decade.
Given these troubling numbers, there’s a good chance you are facing that same challenge in your workplace. While there is plenty of speculation about what might be the reasons for the disengagement, the questions that we’re going to address in this article are 1) How can you tell if your employees are disengaged? and 2) What can you do about it?
Workplace Community refers to the overall health and integrity of the group of people who work together in an organization. The Rules that govern these interactions have to do with promoting strong and clear communication, providing a common framework that makes it easier to get things done, and establishing common values.
