Aesop's Fabled Winning Strategy

You have heard the tale since childhood, and if you heeded it, you learned one of the greatest business strategies while you were still in the nursery. The Tortoise and the Hare have a race, and even though the hare is a much faster animal, the steadiness of the tortoise prevails and he crosses the finish line first.

This principle was exemplified in the life of NCAA basketball coach and lecturer John Wooden, winner of ten national championships, who counted among his favorite maxims, "Be quick, but don't hurry." He was known for putting his most consistent players into the game.

Consistency is a trait that is easy to find among the success stories of all varieties. Michelangelo painted the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine chapel with it. The Pilgrims survived where other settlements had failed because of it. Edison found an improved light bulb filament with it. Lincoln ended the Civil War with it. Walt Disney built an entertainment empire with it.

Since consistency and dependability are essential for building a base of repeat customers, keeping an even-keeled workplace is important for your bottom line. For that reason alone there is a need to train your employees to be consistent. But perhaps an even better reason is that maintaining a steady workplace environment will eliminate a lot of employee drama. In Aesop's fable, the Hare boasted of never having lost a race and the Tortoise was ridiculed for being slow-moving. The verbal hype may not have directly affected the outcome, but it did create an unpleasant atmosphere at the starting line.

The Character Training Institute, Inc., in their book, Achieving True Success, offers a list of "I will's" that promote consistency.
I will...
• make the most of my spare time
• keep trying until I succeed
• keep my work area neat
• complete all that I am expected to do
• keep my word
• be careful what I promise
• pull my share of the load

Putting these into practice will greatly reduce the gyration of workplace highs and lows. When everyone is keeping their word and pulling their share of the load, then you begin to see that the race is not between your employees; they are all running on the same relay team. The race is against your business competitors, and you will consistently emerge as the victorious tortoise.

A Dozen Axioms to Ease the Daily Grind

The word axiom comes from a Greek word that encompasses the ideas of deeming worthy, being in balance, and having value. These may sound cliché, but why reinvent the wheel when they are tried and true?

1. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. – Colin Powell

2. Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

3. I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. – Frances Willard

4. The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense. – Thomas Edison

5. The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist. – Harold Wilkins

6. Every business is built on friendship. – J. C. Penney

7. See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little. – Pope John XXIII

8. Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert. – Robert Brault

9. Drive thy business or it will drive thee. – Benjamin Franklin

10. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. – Japanese proverb

11. Judge not according to appearances, but judge according to equity. – Jewish Proverb

12. When you own your own business, you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours. – Anonymous

Is it Time to Fire Your Performance Appraisal System?

You probably have heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences. A classic example is seen in the early days of forestry management. When the US Forest Service was created in 1905, so much emphasis was put on the suppression of forest fires that biodiversity began to decrease due to fewer young forest habitats, species like lodgepole pine in the Rockies and long leaf pine in the South, both of which require intense heat for germination, became at risk, competition increased the stress on existing trees, and a build-up of debris in the forest's understory made fires more ferocious when they did break out. For three-quarters of a century, the "fix" was actually causing more problems than it solved.

Using old-style employee Performance Appraisal Systems can sometimes be like that. In an attempt to manage personnel more effectively, some workers lose their motivation, while the employees who believe they can do better elsewhere start to leave. If employees view performance appraisals as more office politics, then the unintended consequences of increased dissatisfaction and dropping retention rates are sure to follow.

It is in situations like this that using a PEO can be especially effective. When they act as your Human Resources department, they can conduct appropriate evaluations that minimize the politicking and will not disenfranchise your staff.

If your employee evaluation system still has all the inbred dread of a high school report card, then it is time to update and innovate. Your company's true benefit of an annual performance evaluation is not so much about knowing if an employee is doing what he is supposed to be doing—it should not take an annual evaluation to know that, as it is about learning if you are meeting the leadership and training needs of your employees.

An evaluation ought to be able to identify what management needs to do to improve, not inflict another round of regulation, as happened in the Forest Service. For years, scientific research that recognized fire as essential to ecosystems was ignored because of an ill-fitting congressional policy. Using a PEO can help your company avoid that kind of management mistake.

An annual Performance Appraisal is a check-up to see if the consequences of your management policies are the consequences that you intended. Are you realizing better retention rates and higher levels of employee motivation? Are you managing your office ecosystem to produce a thriving community of employees?

Does your Relocation Policy Need a Transfer of Ideas?

In these economic times, it is pretty common for the regular guy on the street to know someone who has had to relocate to keep or find a job—it might even be himself. But most people don't think very often about the other side of the coin, the side that business owners and company managers cannot avoid: needing to relocate employees.

There have always been business cycles, and relocation plans have been around for millennia, just ask a nomadic tribesman. The nomads, however, could pack up their yurts and take their houses with them. Today's businesses have their problems complicated by a reeling housing market.

Weichert Relocation Resources Inc., a company that specializes in relocation and assignment management, has seen some early signs for optimism in 2010. For one thing, there has been a drop in the rate at which companies have had to add or increase their loss-on-sale assistance. A year ago, 40% of companies surveyed were having to ante up or improve their existing relocation packages, but fewer businesses find that necessary now.

The number of companies that had given their employees added incentives to sell their existing homes quickly have dropped, as have the number that increased coverage for temporary living assistance. At the same time, companies are weighing more closely which employees will be transferred and are instituting tiered benefit packages for those who are relocated. In a nutshell, 90% of the companies in the Weichert survey had changed their policies in response to the recessionary business environment.

The most frequent changes were made as a response to the real-estate market, and not about internal company affairs. These changes put more restrictions on employees who wanted to take advantage of relocation assistance, such as requiring that transferees work with a qualified real-estate broker and make list-price reductions when advised.

Ellie Sullivan, director of consulting at Weichert, says that one of the most effective changes made by companies comes in their improvement of the pre-decision process. Many companies had no pre-decision rubrics at all before the most recent recession. Now, 65% of the companies surveyed are offering pre-decision counseling. Potential transferees receive counseling on the new location and home sale issues. Giving an employee more information before a transfer is a "done deal" saves costs for a company by reducing the number of transfers that don't work out after the fact. Lina Paskevicius, consulting manager at Cartus Global Consulting, believes that putting more time into the pre-decision assessments is becoming "the new normal."

It can be hard for a company to persuade employees to move during a volatile economy, but new and updated approaches and policies can result in better all-round results.

Listening is Not a Multi-tasking Activity

Listening is not a multi-tasking activity—unless you're an auctioneer. Multi-tasking works then because the auctioneer stays alert for short specific signals. Attentive listening requires a considerable amount of focus, and attentive listeners will excel in making the other person feel heard. Bidders at an auction always know when they have been heard because the price goes up, but auction house tactics can hurt a business.

Hopefully you learned the first key to being an attentive listener when you were in kindergarten. Don't interrupt. What you may not have learned then is that interrupting entails more than speaking out of turn. Eye rolling, yawning, and staring out the window are interruptions that show you are not actively listening.

The second key to know is that people rarely cut to the chase. Most people like to set the stage before they begin to make their point. Let them talk; you will learn quite a bit of the subtext from listening to how they frame their story.

A third and crucial key is that responding with platitudes or grinding criticism will make you look like a jerk. When someone has just shared a concern, don't brush them off. They want the respect of being understood. It's human nature to not be so forthcoming in the future when you weren't heard in the past. You need your employees to have confidence in you, and attentive listening builds trust.

How to Hear What a Ditz is Really Saying—or trying to

It can be tough to have to listen to scatterbrained and eccentric persons. It can be tougher to know what they mean. Here are some tips for checking to see if what you heard is the same as what they think they said.

• Recap by stating a question. If Mary just spent three minutes talking about toner, dry cleaning her sweater, missed deadlines, and a broken doohickey, recap with, "You'd like me to call someone to run maintenance on the copy machine, right?

• Say it back. Summarize your understanding of the situation and see if they agree.

• Say it another way. If possible, find a simile or metaphor that fits the situation. If the complaint was about too much work and too little help, say, "So, am I to understand that you feel like the Little Red Hen?"

These responses help you to generate useful feedback and to avoid potentially costly misunderstandings.

Bullying - It's not just a playground thing

The Workplace Bullying Institute—yes, it really exists, and despite its name, it is actually anti-bullying—commissioned a study that found that 37 percent of the U.S. workforce have experienced bullying at work at least once in their life. With numbers that high, bullying is far more widespread an issue in the workplace than sexual harassment. While most organizations have policies to deal with sexual harassment, only a scant minority have policies in place to deal with bullying.

Momentum is building to pass laws and regulations to deal with bullying if employers won't police themselves. Unchecked workplace bullying creates so much discontent and stress with its accompanying feelings of disengagement by the victim that it would be in an employer's best economic interest to develop a policy without waiting to be forced into it by a law. With statistics available that show bullying eventually results in economic losses, it at first seems surprising that more companies have not come out with anti-bullying policies.

At least part of the problem is that there are different kinds of bullies. A law might help a worker have legal recourse with aggressive bullies, but what about the backstabbing and manipulative bullies? The bottom line is that onsite employers and managers need to be nipping bullying tendencies in the bud and not waiting until problems spiral so far out of control that the legislature attempts to do their job for them.

Here are some suggestions on how to get started:

Since manipulative behaviors are accompanied by a lack of respect for others, make "Respect" one of your company's core values. Train managers in the character of respect and take a few minutes to teach about respect at all employee meetings.

Management needs to be aware of bullies. That means realizing that manipulative behaviors don't have to display anger or overt threats; passive aggressive bullies exist. It means taking every report seriously and not excusing it without first investigating.

When bullying behaviors are reported, investigate and look for patterns. Take a friendly face-to-face approach with the accused bully. Do they seem real and transparent or not? Do comments from other co-workers tend to fall along the same lines?

Train the entire staff in conflict resolution. It's a skill all employees can benefit from, not just upper management.

Conduct exit interviews when employees leave. You'll get some of your most candid appraisals from exit interviews.

Creating Fully Engaged Employees

In the Gallup Management Journal, Curt Coffman uses a clever acronym for disengaged employees; he calls them "cave dwellers." CAVE stands for "Consistently Against Virtually Everything." Whimsical as that may be, disengaged employees are a troubling reality that can be costly for a small business.

Recent slippage in the economy has exacerbated the problem. Fears of job loss or unwanted transfer, postponed or lower-than-expected raises, and reductions in hours or assignments are all linked to the economy, and are all likely to have negative effects on commitment to the job. For many small businesses, employee disengagement is like being hit with a double whammy; in an economy where efficiency and productivity are needed the most, businesses are experiencing higher turnover rates and insecure leadership.

The good news is that there are simple, inexpensive ways to turn the tide and help get employees more actively engaged in their work. The keys are clearer communications and stronger relationships.

• Ask for Input
The employee who is working "in the trenches" often knows the lowdown on ways to improve or streamline operating procedures, but if they have disengaged with a "nobody hears me" attitude, the business is poorer because of it. Asking for input and allowing employees to be heard takes only a few minutes a week, but it boosts morale, and when an employee does have a good idea, it can boost the bottom line as well.

• Have a Purpose on Purpose
You probably told new hires about the purpose of the company during the interview process—when they had a hundred other thoughts swirling in their minds, but do your employees still remember that purpose in the here and now? Employees need reminders. Something as simple as a pep talk to refocus on your company's purpose will help people feel like they belong as part of the team. Slogans and banners posted in employee break areas also help to keep your business goals spotlighted.

• Communicate
Remember Show and Tell times from grade school? Those were designed to practice and build good communication skills. Keeping your employees invested in their work calls for a grownup business version of clear communication. Show them with action and tell them with words that you are a trustworthy leader. Managers who build sturdy, confident relationships with the people they manage will build a sturdy business. A good manager can answer an employee's questions with assurance.

• Recognize Efforts
Good workers often feel unappreciated. Big successes usually get recognition, but it's recognition of the effort, not the success, that boosts employee engagement. Very few people are able to be like Thomas Edison who, after repeated failures, was able to optimistically say, "I found 586 ways that won't work!" There are several variations of that quote and Edison probably said it more than once. A good boss will repeatedly encourage optimism in his employees too.

It's primarily the boss's responsibility to come out of his cave, build relationships, establish communication, and keep his employees engaged and ready-to-work.

Five Fertilizers for Talent Management

Now that you have hired the best seeds and seedlings in the form of talented personnel, reaping bumper-crop results will depend on many factors. Although you cannot control the storms, or even fully predict the weather in a changing economy, you do have power over the ways you cultivate and fertilize your talent.

Apples + Oranges = Fruit Salad
Many companies regard Development Planning as oranges and Performance Management as apples. Development planning occurs during executive sessions, but employees are graded on their performance in a lonely office. As a consequence, employees often don't have a clear picture of a company's true needs, while the planners have only a fuzzy image of the training activities they need to address. The first round of fertilizer is applied to making the commitment to connect these two areas. They need to grow alongside each other.

The Wisdom of "Know Thyself"
This ancient Greek philosophy can be put to good use in employee self-assessments. Employees are often tougher on themselves than they are on others. Implementing regular self-assessments has three immediate benefits: 1. It gives your employee a voice, 2. It gives managers a fresh perspective, and, 3. It lays the groundwork for useful communication to proceed. They make a good starter fertilizer for growing your talent.

Wisdom in Counsel of Others
Sometimes this goes by the trendy name of "360° Reviews," but whether you call it that or fall back on the old maxim that "Two heads are better than one," there is much to be gained by seeking the counsel of others. Collecting feedback from a variety of sources—customers, peers, subordinates and others, will allow a balanced picture to emerge for your talent management. Establishing a climate of evenhandedness leads to more fruitful talent management results.

Life Beyond the Carrot
Letting your employee see the "beyond" part is crucial in good talent management. Employees are usually given short-term and short-focused goals—the carrot. Giving them a view of the larger-context, higher level, goals lets them see how their work contributes to overall company success. That boosts morale and can become a self-perpetuating stimulus. It also allows creative employees to "bend to the sun" and produce some great ideas; a company's most creative talent often has difficulty with the team-player attitude because they view the world a little differently.

Reward
The old "Wanted" posters offered rewards dead or alive. In business, alive is better, but the lure of reward still stimulates achievement. Most often, rewards come in the form of pay-for-performance bonuses. Being entrusted with a perk like flex-time, having the prestige of a personal parking space, or receiving a simple "lunch is on me" invitation can also be incentives. The important quality that makes rewards work is that your employees perceive them as fair, consistent, and attainable with a little extra effort, lest you inadvertently generate fertilizer burn-out.

Effective talent management must go beyond writing reports and stuffing them into dusty personnel files; it must encourage people and stimulate growth.

Time Management

It seems to be a universal truth that people are always running short on time. During the French Revolution, their government tried to fix this by making a calendar of ten-day weeks. How much more work could you get done if you had only three weekends per month? Their new clock also divided days into ten hours of a hundred minutes each. Working a four-hour shift then would be like working for more than 9½ of our standard hours. Unsurprisingly, their revolutionary calendar was abandoned within 13 years.

If today's businessmen and women need extra time, the only way to get more is by recovering what is currently being wasted. The Communication Briefings Newsletter has identified the five biggest time wasters in business. Do any of these pertain to you?

1. Poor prioritizing. If this is a tough area for you, make daily lists of what needs to be done and by when. Don't forget to schedule some cushion time to allow for unforeseeable accidents and opportunities.

2. Fear of delegating. Thinking that it is easier to do a routine task yourself is being short-sighted. Taking the time to properly train an employee now will pay off in big time savings in the future.

3. Not saying "No." You can't do it all. If you have trouble knowing when to say no, revisit your lists of priorities. If a request will take time away from achieving your priority list, you should probably say, "Sorry, I can't."

4. Being tethered to the phone. Clients like the personal touch of reaching a real person. Can some calls be delegated to others? Record a nice intro for your voicemail and use it when you need to work without interruptions.

5. Procrastination. If you procrastinate, you are human, but it's also human to focus on what we don't like. Focusing on the end result instead helps considerably in overcoming procrastination. If the task seems overwhelming, do it one step at a time.

If you have done all this and are still coming up short, consider buying extra administrative time by contracting with a PEO.

Starting a Business in the Right Frame of Mind

What is the difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner?

That is not a riddle that will regale your friends. If you were looking for a snappy answer like, 'A business owner is a slave to his business and an entrepreneur is in the business of turning his employees into slaves,' then keep looking. The joke was only half-right. A few business owners might be a slave to their business, but the true distinction is a person's mindset.

Some people try to set up a business by the book. They educate themselves about the service or product. They find the financing. They doggedly dot their i's and cross their t's. They hustle for clients. But without the entrepreneurial mindset, they struggle.

Let's look at a hypothetical illustration:

Sam likes his work, he even excels at it. He has a knack for doing what he does and gets paid a respectable $69K a year for doing it. What Sam doesn't like so much is his boss. When a big project comes through, his boss expects Sam to work extra hours without extra compensation and then takes all the glory for himself. Sam's mindset becomes, "I don't need this; I can start my own company and pay myself for my work." So he does. He snags a few clients from his current accounts, finds several more though his connections, hires a couple of professionals to join him and trains them the way he wants. Things start off fine enough, but after awhile a few cracks develop. Some of the customers are late in making payments and Sam is now having to handle those collections himself. He is also having to do the bulk of new sales because he doesn't trust his employees to close a deal. He hires new employees to get some relief, but is so busy trying to stop new cracks that he never seems to find time to train them thoroughly. In short, he is being spread too thin. Swamped beneath all the income, outgo, ordering, shipping, receiving, filing, reporting and processing, Sam is one unhappy business owner. He never latched on to an entrepreneurial mindset.

How would an entrepreneurial frame-of-mind have managed things differently?

Sam may own the business now, but he never stopped working for his company; he still works for a company, just a different one. An entrepreneur will work on his company, building it with structured systems the way a mason would build with bricks. Instead of doing the essential but assignable tasks himself, he'd have spent more time training his employees how to do those tasks. Instead of micromanaging his employees, he'd trust them to be responsible tor handling the routine aspects of the business. Instead of working harder for more hours, the entrepreneurial approach is to look for ways to work more efficiently. The entrepreneurial mindset is open to seeking help, whereas Sam's attitude was to do it "all by myself."

Ownership is having a set of legal documents on file. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. The entrepreneurial lifestyle orders the day such that time is the treasured commodity and money is a tool. The entrepreneur understands that the old saying Time is money is often a fallacy. Sometimes money can be used to buy more time.

One means that many entrepreneurs have used to buy more time is by selecting a professional employer organization (PEO) company to handle some of the administrative burdens. A start-up business may find it's better to contract with a PEO to handle the preparation of the payroll, to administer benefits plans, and to reduce other legal liabilities.

Avoiding Gullibility

Gullibility is a fact of life. As a baby you heard about gullibility in your nursery tales. Remember the wolf that was masquerading as Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother? Gullibility pervades our heroic epics. Remember how the citizens of Troy thought that the big wooden horse was a magnificent present? Gullibility is infused in our holiday traditions—or did you never believe in Santa? PT Barnum, who coined the phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute," entertained millions with his circus. Even academic institutions that ought to know better were conned for years by the Piltdown man, a paleontological "missing link" in evolution that turned out to be, not a mistake, but an intentional hoax.

Gullibility may offer you a secret satisfaction when you see it in an enemy—they call that schadenfreude, if you believe me—but otherwise, being gullible is a trait to be avoided. It is to be especially avoided in business decisions where money changes hands and deals are built on trust.

You know that con men and back-stabbing schemers are out there. Many are very good at duping chumps. How do you avoid becoming their next victim?

At the top of the list is "Don't make impulsive decisions." Give yourself a little time to think things through. The old sleep-on-it advice is good because it gives you the opportunity to view a situation from a fresh perspective.

Next, do some fact checking. The Internet and modern business tools make this easier than ever. Entire websites like snopes.com, factcheck.org, and TruthOrFiction.com, and the popular TV show Myth Busters have all emphasized the importance of doing a little research.

Know Thyself. Socrates said it and it stands as some of the best advice ever given. The best hedges against gullibility grow atop the realization of your own weaknesses.

Paired with knowing your limitations is planning the defensive strategies to deal with and counteract them. In Stephen Greenspan's book, Annals of Gullibility, he calls this working up a "repertoire of disengagement tactics."

Practice social intelligence. A few people are naturally gifted, for others, social intelligence can be learned. A series of books is available that helps teach social cues even to autistic children; if a kid with a learning challenge can do it, you really have no excuse.

Be cautious in your networking. Build a special network of people who have proven themselves trustworthy and who will look out for your best interests.

Character: The Key to Making Your Business Stand Out

In the classrooms across America, we call it character education. In the business world, it is more likely to be labeled ethics. Either way, one of the hallmarks of a civilized society is its values system.

Stories from the dawn of civilization are almost always morality tales. Ancient Greece, a pinnacle of culture, produced Aesop's Fables where every story had a moral teaching. Beowulf, the earliest tome of Anglo-Saxon culture, emphasizes loyalty and honor. Stories of the Incas taught that those who obeyed their moral codes—do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy—would earn reward.

An old tale from Asia tells of a man whose one good deed was to spare a spider's life. Later, after the man died and was being tortured in hell, the spider spun a silver thread to return the favor and help him escape. As the man was climbing the thread to safety, he noticed that others were climbing up after him. Fearful that this added weight might break the thread, he began kicking them off, but as he did this, he lost his balance and fell back into the pit of hell.

The point is that on every continent, across different cultures and spans of time, ethics count. Good and evil have just rewards. Having identified such a universal truth, it just makes sense that applying the concept to business would be a way to lead your company to success as well.

Indeed, beyond the folklore, hard modern statistics bear that out. Trickery and chicanery are a flash-in-the pan sensation and the key to longevity in business is to steadily work on improving ethical customer relations and good service.

Character Traits and Values that will build trust and make your business stand out from the rest:

• Loyalty. Using the difficult times to demonstrate commitment to the customers you serve will build trust.

• Reliability. Being reliable in providing the good or service your customers are paying for will gain their trust.

• Truthfulness. A good definition of truthfulness is earning future trust by accurately reporting past facts. This foundation of integrity creates trust.

• Sincerity. Sincerity starts with telling the truth and takes it the next step by showing an eagerness to do the right thing. Trust is built when clients and customers see your transparent motive and your sincere desire to do the right thing.

• Courtesy. Courtesy is more than simply being polite. It's also being attentive to your customers and gaining their respect by respecting them.

• Diligence. Seeing each task through all the way to the end is that way to accomplish goals.

• Accessibility. Knowing that you will "be there" builds trust.

• Persuasiveness with Truth. Being able to guide your clients and customers with truth and wisdom will build relationships.

• Enthusiasm. In a world of woes and criticism, customers will seek out the hope they see in your enthusiasm.

There is an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness. – George Washington

Choosing the Most Painless Method for Filing W2 and 1099 Forms

One of the biggest headaches that anyone is likely to suffer is the headache that's generated by government required paperwork. For a small businessman, this can be the filing of the W2 forms for employees and 1099 forms for the work that was contracted out.

The relief for these kinds of headaches won't come from the aspirin bottle. It comes from being organized, planning for the deadlines, and choosing the filing options that are right for your business. These options are filing by paper yourself, filing electronically, purchasing software to assist your filing, paying your bookkeeper to do it for you, subscribing to an online filing service, or contracting with a professional employer organization (PEO) with the experience to handle it.

Filing paper forms might be a good option if you are a hands-on owner and your business is very small in the personnel department. Schedule ample time for working on them and be sure the form that you use meets the specifications required. Filing electronically has the additional benefit of a later due date, no federal form requirements to worry about, and confirmation of your submission status, e.g. Received, Not Yet Processed, Complete.

Purchasing software to assist your filing can help contain costs; some formats are available for less than $50. Choose a program that is designed especially for your size of business, that is easy to install and use, and that is capable of generating 2-sided forms that meet the current specifications.

Paying your own in-house clerk may not be an alternative that is available to every small business, but if you already have a bookkeeper skilled in papyrocracy, ruling by paperwork, that is a good option.

Subscribing to an online filing service may cost a little more than DIY filing, but they will also have a help desk, off-site back-up of your filing for up to three years, and they will be up-to-date on changes and current regulations.

If none of these seem right for you, you probably need a PEO company that can relieve the headache by filing all your W-2 and 1099 forms for you.

Physical Exercise Is Good for Business

Reading stories of high achievers can be inspiring. Motivation can be contagious and you begin thinking, "Yeah, I can do that too!" At other times, the high achievers set the bar so high that it has the opposite effect. It's demoralizing.

The demoralizing effect nearly happened to me. I had watched the Olympics. I'd had my vicarious bobsled run. Now it was time to focus on work. I really wasn't in the mood to hear someone tell me that the way to get my business out of the doldrums was by training for a triathlon. It would be hard enough to train for one sport, and now I was being told that entrepreneurial success would come if I trained for three!

I'd have thrown in the towel then and there, but he was making good points about setting goals, strategic planning, measuring performance, planning for contingencies, and sizing up the competition. It was easy to see the parallels between being a triathlete and managing a company. His big selling points were stress reduction and enhanced concentration. What businessman couldn't benefit from a form of stress reduction that leaves him alert? Most pharmaceutical approaches can dull that winning edge, if not leave one downright comatose. I figured it was worth investigating further.

It turns out that exercise is a great stress reducer, and fortunately it doesn't necessitate mountain biking after an already vigorous swim. The basic principles for stress management can be adapted to nearly every personality type, work situation, and variety of exercise. For instance, if your job keeps you at a computer screen, strength building exercises will help reduce stress, but if you are on your feet and lifting all day long, you'll find greater benefits from stretching exercises. The brain starts releasing stress reducing endorphins after only 20 minutes of exercise, so even multitasking by taking Fido on a brisk dog walk can go a long way, literally and figuratively.

Other Advantages of De-stressing with Exercise

• Stress usually makes the heart speed up and the digestive system slow down. Exercise helps bring these back into balance.

• Repetitive movements and controlled breathing techniques have physiological effects that produce a sense of calm.

• Regular times of physical activity allow your muscles to work. Exercise releases built-up muscle tension and results in less muscle pain, fewer tension headaches, and reduction in joint pain.

• If you choose a performance-based sport as your exercise of choice, as the triathlete mentioned earlier did, then as your performance improves, your body adjusts to better handle higher levels of stress.

• Best of all, stress management through exercise has highly favorable side effects like improving sleep patterns and increasing general awareness.

Six Advantages of Hiring Now

In an economy that's so unpredictable that even Nostradamus might consider scuttling into retirement, there are still several indications that now is the time for a small business owner to hire new employees.

Rhonda Abrams, small business columnist for USA Today, takes the point of view that to experience meaningful growth, you'll have to hire. Surprisingly, at least at first thought, she writes, "more than half of the Fortune 500 companies actually started in a recession or depression." When that statement is analyzed more closely, some of the logic becomes more apparent.

• Competition is weaker. As other struggling businesses start dropping out and cutting back, their loss can be your advantage if you can seize the opportunities that open up in the wake of less competition.

• Customers are looking for less expensive alternatives. Many folks who were locked in to buying brand names from the big guys a few years ago are looking for cost-effective substitutes. If small businesses can supply that, they have a built-in edge that was spawned as a direct result of the recession.

• Labor costs are lower. In some cases, they are substantially lower. Potential hires that might have turned up their nose at a lowered pay rate a couple of years ago are often happy to accept that wage in today's business climate.

• A recession produces a growing talent pool. With more people are looking for work, you have a wider selection of candidates for the job and this fact leads to two reasons to hire now.
1. With more talent available, you can select an employee that more precisely meets your current need instead of settling for hiring someone that is 'close, but trainable.' You will be able to realize some savings in training costs almost immediately.
2. You can afford to be pickier and choose an employee that best meets your own business philosophy. This will render greater benefits over time because better compatibility results in a less stressful and more efficient workplace.

• You will be better prepared to take advantage of a future growth spurt. Even if you can't justify hiring a full-time employee now, hiring part-time or contracting out some of your work will position you in a good place when the recovery cycle does come.

One final thought from Ms. Abrams: "Creating a good job is one of the most rewarding things you’ll ever do."

A Social Media Bill of Rights—and Wrongs

"Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," so says our Bill of Rights. But what about employers? Should a boss be able to regulate an employee's blog or his posts on a social networking site? How can a company balance the importance of sharing ideas through open exchange with the dangers of having an employee saying something stupid? Maybe it is time for your company to have a Social Media Bill of Rights and Wrongs.

A survey of how several companies have chosen to handle their employees' use of social media indicated that the policies that are most effective are the ones that combine having trust in and putting responsibly on the employees. This strategy works because no good employee is going to want to see their company tank and leave them without a job. Good employees are discerning enough to not intentionally bad-mouth their employer, so a social media strategy needs to focus on things that can help prevent inadvertent harmful posts.

Here is a compendium of ideas your company may wish to consider when outlining a social media policy:

• Employees ought to follow existing laws. This would include respect for copyrights, no plagiarized posts, no obscene language, slander, or libelous statements.

• Employees should put a disclaimer in their profiles that clearly states that the opinions expressed are their own views and not necessarily those of the company.

• Time spent on social media should not interfere with other job-related tasks and commitments.

• Employees should post as if their boss will read it—and bosses ought to be encouraged to spot check their employees' posts. This will cut two ways—obviously it will reduce insulting and disparaging statements, but it should also help keep excessive flattery and sycophantic remarks in check.

• Employees should respect the privacy of clients and customers. Do not discuss them in posts without their permission.

• The employer needs clear communication with the employees about what constitutes confidential and proprietary information. Employees who have not been privy to managerial meetings may not have the big picture or know where the boundaries lie unless their bosses have taken the time to teach this.

• Encourage the Golden Rule of treating others the way you want to be treated.

Is your Résumé Action-Ready?

A résumé ought to be a living document, not a dusty one. If you have done something noteworthy in your job in the past three months, it is time to update your résumé—and if you haven't done something noteworthy in your job in the past three months, it is time to look for more challenging work, in which case it is also time to update your résumé.

According to research done for Robert Half International, 45% of workers haven't updated in the past year and 20% haven't updated in more than two years. If a new job opportunity did pop up, they would not be able to respond quickly.

Résumé Tune-Up

Spell-Check!
A revved up résumé ought to hold an employer spellbound, not leave him dumbfounded by the spelling. Poor spelling makes an employer skiddish skittish about how conscious conscientious you really are.

Use Bullet Points to Hit the Target.
• key words geared to profession
• action verbs, active voice
• quantify accomplishments, show numbers
• skills and strengths

Customization Specials
Now that most résumés are stored as word processor documents or portable document files rather than professionally printed on vellum, your main résumé file can be easily customized and framed so that it emphasizes the skills and training that apply to the job at hand. Keep master lists of things that you have done, and then pick out the four or five that best suit the specific job that you are applying for.

Go Social
Social networking is probably the oldest job-hunting skill around, but incorporating it in a résumé is relatively new. Use it, but with discretion. John Hill, Michigan State University’s director of alumni career services says, "LinkedIn is like the corporate office. Twitter is like the water cooler, and Facebook is like the bar."

Hiring Commissioned Salespeople? Don’t Use a Scientific Selection Process

I ran across an interesting post from a fellow blogger the other day. He plaintively described the dreadful failure rate of newly-hired commissioned salespeople. Over three-quarters of his new hires were tanking in the first three months. Obviously, he felt the need to reassess his interview technique.

He concluded that he'd been interviewing as if his company had the greater risk, and therefore he hedged his bets to reduce risk to the company—it had not worked. Trying a new paradigm, he structured the interview as though all the risk was on the candidate. It makes sense. When a commissioned salesperson flunks at his job, he doesn't get paid.

To put his revelation into practice, he began talking to the sales candidates like he would talk to a partner. His newly formatted interview included discussion of the company's development, industry trends, success and failure rates, and similar matters. He then evaluated the candidates' strengths and pitfalls as if looking for a partner.

What was the outcome? He called it "significantly more effective" than the scientific process they'd been using.

Equally interesting were the views in the comment section that followed. The consensus agreed that commissioned salesperson interviews are some of the toughest, and they added other insights as well.

The business partner approach works because most good salesmen don't like bosses. They want to be their own boss, so interviewing in a manner that brings out traits of self-sufficiency helps in the selection process. One commentator went so far as to suggest that the real sales manager of any good salesperson is their "significant other." He likes to have a portion of the hiring process include an interview with the family unit to get them on board.

Several posters lamented that all the great salesmen seem to already be out selling, but that excuse seems like the whine of the dateless college coed complaining that all the great guys are already married. Several comments said having clearly defined expectations helps, and that reality holds in continuing this analogy—the girl doesn't know what kind of man she wants, all she knows is that she wants a date. Is it little wonder that hiring commissioned salespeople with that attitude has results similar to dating services?

The original blogger was struggling to find his balance of art and science in the hiring process. It is a battle we all face.

The Importance of Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic methods of motivation, those that arise from the task itself, are finally getting some of the attention they deserve. In the past, business has relied heavily on external motivators such as a pay bonus, an extra pin on the uniform, or a parking place near the door to help motivate employees. There comes a point, especially in jobs that entail creativity, that an employee will start identifying with that great line from the musical Hello, Dolly! when Dolly Levi tells her would-be beau, "And on those cold winter nights, Horace, you can snuggle up to your cash register. It's a little lumpy, but it rings!" His wooing technique had failed to motivate her.

Dolly stated what every employee learns—that there is more to life, and to a job, than simply a paycheck. Distilled down, the wisdom of recognizing "more to life" has found three new motivational buzz words: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy
Simply stated, this means that people want to have control over their work. Giving people a goal and then giving them the freedom to have some say-so over how they meet the goal can be a terrific motivator.

Mastery
Every normal person wants to be good at what they do. There is more enjoyment in doing something when you can do it well. By using this fundamental human trait as a basis for motivation, work becomes more interesting and productivity increases.

Purpose
Studies in behavioral sciences have shown that people don't mind being a little cog in a bigger machine as long as they know that their cog has significance. A good boss knows how to capitalize on the natural desire to be part of something that is larger than one's self by helping employees know that their work is meaningful.