It is the time of year when most companies are doing their budgeting for the next year. This can be a frustrating and time consuming exercise. It is also important. Does every company need a budget? I don’t think so. Smaller companies, where the owner is very close to the transactions, may not need a […]
Archive | Management
More Free Money!
During the pandemic, the CARES Act provided several programs to help businesses. The best known was the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), which had two phases, and was extremely popular. Another program under the CARES Act was the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), sometimes known as the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC). The ERC was nowhere near […]
What Are We Hiring the Office to Do?
What are we hiring the office to do? That’s a question asked by the CEO of a large investor in commercial office spaces. That’s also a question that CEOs of businesses large and small are asking right about now. Proponents of going back to pre-pandemic conditions are arguing that we are hiring the office to […]
This Time of Year
This time of year, we businesspeople are typically working on next year’s budget and year-end tax planning. During December 2020, most of us are adding Covid concerns and PPP Loan Forgiveness to our usual year-end list. Let’s briefly talk about each of these items. Budgets While Covid brought a whole new world for many, and […]
Dashboards—Terrific Tool or the Latest Fashion?
The answer to the question posed in the title is a bit of both. With any business trend or fashion, there is always something of substance and value, and a tendency to overdo it, because, after all, we need to sell books, seminars, and consulting services. Dashboards began in the 1970s as businesses began using […]
The Future Revisited: The Outcomes of Increasing Productivity
I remember when I was in teenager (a long time ago), hearing a pundit say, “If productivity gains continue, by the 1980s we’ll all be looking around for something to do.” That didn’t happen, of course, except it sort of did. The factories of North America were mostly automated long ago. The computer revolution that […]
Book Review: How to be Rich
Every year there are lots of new business books, often on trending topics. Occasionally, I like to go back and read an old business book. Sometimes I’ll do this because the book is a classic and worth revisiting. Other times, I like to read an old business book to see whether the book’s advice or […]
Happy New Year 2019! My Resolution
Happy New Year! Here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2019! I’ve got something on my mind. We all get them. LinkedIn sends us people the computers think we ought to connect with. I actually scrolled through these automated suggestions recently. About 75 percent of them were men. At least half of them were people I […]
Thoughts on a Post-Literate World–“I Don’t Really Read Books”
A client related this story. They were interviewing a candidate for a high-level executive position at a very prominent company. During the interview, they asked the candidate, “What kind of books do you read?” The candidate’s response was, “I don’t really read books.” The “really” wasn’t necessary, the person just doesn’t read books. Perhaps a […]
This Isn’t Rocket Science
The hardest thing about running a business must be figuring out how to manage people. When creating processes, the handoffs in the process, that is the interaction of people and departments are the hardest part. Creating alignment between individual goals and those of the company is endlessly challenging. Think of the creation of an incentive […]