Welcome to the premiere edition of Doing Business, a monthly e-newsletter for small business owners and human resource professionals.  As a qualified purchaser of Business Development Group services, a free three-month subscription to this newsletter is yours for the reading!  (Anyone else can subscribe for a small, user-friendly fee.)  Enjoy!

Each month, we’ll highlight some key issues and concerns that face small business owners and managers, and their employees, today – and take a creative look at how to manage them effectively.  Regular features, like the Doctor's Chart Q&A column, will give you the opportunity to “talk back” to us via email and have your questions answered.  If we print your question in the column, you’ll receive a coupon good for a 5% discount on your next purchase of Business Development Group services!  (This is indeed the best of all possible worlds.)

 Busy business people don’t always have time to read, so why should I ask you to read this newsletter?  Because in the course of the next six months, it will be the equivalent of reading some 3500 pages – I’ll be gleaning the “best of the best” of the ideas, resources, and learnings I’ve collected over the years and giving them to you in “sound bite” form.  Pick an idea below that you like and put it into practice over the next month.  Who knows?  You just might find yourself living on the cutting edge!

  Humankind’s Greatest Asset

What makes human beings different from, say, sea slugs?  Income tax withholding, for one thing, but also the capacity to think.  Tom Jackson reminds readers that everything of value in the world began with – what else? – an idea.  (That includes everything negative, by the way, such as war, intolerance, estate taxes, and C-Span.)  What kinds of ideas have you been having lately?

The best ideas involve positive responses to change.  As Jackson writes:

This is the only true security:  the power to act in the face of risk, to create, redirect, refocus, and transform our energies as required by the vicissitudes of life.  Human beings are adventurous and resourceful.  We fly, we dive;  we build cathedrals and split atoms;  we create art, music, and drama;  we design computers and Big Macs.

 This is profound even if you don’t remember what the word “vicissitudes” means.   Of course, a lot of the time most of us don’t do any of the above, but squander our precious moments watching reruns of Mannix, fuming about road rage, or daydreaming about Britney Spears.  Don’t let this characterize your entire existence.  A mind, as they say, is a terrible thing to waste.  (And, in case you haven’t spent much time at the gym lately, a waist is a terrible thing to mind.)

 Packing Your Bags

  Sick of your job, and ready to quit?  Or, do you suspect you have an employee who’s thinking that way?  Before jumping ship, it’s important to get specific about the problem.  According to change mavens Barry and Linda Gale, there are only six major reasons why people decide to move on.  Use these as a pre-flight checklist before jumping from the frying pan into the preassembled heating element.

1. Overload:  No matter how hard I work, the work is never done.

2. Underload:  There’s not enough to do;  I have to invent ways to look busy.

3. Dead End:  There’s no hope for advancement in this organization.

4. Insecurity:  My neck is on the chopping block.

5. Relationships:  I’m the only sane person around here.

6. Balance:  If I were meant to have a personal life, the company would have issued me one.

How many of these apply to you?  If five or more, pack your bags.  If two or less, be grateful for what you’ve got.  If three or four, keep your eyes peeled, but don’t leap out of the plane until you’re sure there’s a parachute strapped to your back.  (Note to business owners:  all of the above can be modified with little or no cash outlay.  If you’re not sure how, ask Business Development Group for help.)

Are You An Entrepreneur?

Common advice these days is that “everyone needs to think like an entrepreneur”.  But most employees don’t have a clue what that means:  Voting yourself some healthy stock options?  Indulging in insider trading?  Selling items from the company storeroom at a substantial markup?

Small business expert Paul Hawken lists five qualities that distinguish entrepreneurial employees from turf protection specialists.  On this scorecard, how are your employees doing today?  What can you do to enhance their weakest area in the next six months? 

1.           Persistence:  Entrepreneurial employees never use the phrase “That’s not my job”.  When they don’t know something, they take responsibility for finding out.

2.           Realism:  Entrepreneurial employees face facts – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Neither terminal pessimists nor starry-eyed optimists, they learn to see things as they are (including themselves) and to respond accordingly.

3.           Risk management:  Entrepreneurial employees take enough risks to fail some of the time.  They know that a person who never fails has stopped growing and learning.  But they rarely fail in the same way twice.

4.           Lifelong learning:  Entrepreneurial employees don’t rest on their laurels.  They know that today’s cutting edge is tomorrow’s fossil.  They enjoy mental challenges and know how to learn.

5.           Economic savvy.  Entrepreneurial employees don’t think “profit” is a four-letter word.  They know how to cost-justify their jobs.  They know the importance of adding value.

If your employees fall short in one or more areas, sending them to a Business Development Group workshop or seminar might just be what they need to catapult them to a higher level of motivation and success.

Living Backwards

When you’re stuck in a rut, sometimes the most useful thing you can do is to think about your situation in a completely different way.  If you can’t come up with anything else, adopt a completely absurd, ridiculous viewpoint and see what happens.

Creativity consultant Roger van Oech cites the example of the self-styled comic “Strange de Jim”, who posed the question, “What would happen if people lived their lives backwards?”  Here is his thought-provoking answer.

You would die first, getting that out of the way.  Then you’d live for twenty years in an old age home until you were kicked out for being too young.  You’d receive a gold watch and go to work.  You’d work for forty years until you were young enough to enjoy your retirement.  You’d go to college, you’d party until you were ready for high school.  In time you’d become a little kid, you’d play, you’d have no responsibilities.  Eventually you’d graduate to babyhood, then enter the womb, spend your last nine months floating in the darkness, and finish off as a gleam in someone’s eye.

Not sure how to put this advice into practice?  Business Development Group has the answers you seek.  Try to give us a call before last week.

What’s More Important Than Work?

Eight decades ago, poet laureate William Butler Yeats penned these memorable words:

The intellect of man is forced to choose

Perfection of the life, or of the work,

And if it take the second must refuse

A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?

In luck or out the toil has left its mark:

That old perplexity – an empty purse,

Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

If you understand this without help, why aren’t you a tenured college professor already? 

A simpler version is posted on my office wall:  “Help me not to be so busy making a living that I forget to make a life.  Amen.”  How about you?  On their deathbed, no one ever wishes they’d spent more time at the office.

Try dividing the waking hours of your typical week into three slices.  After Richard Bolles, call them Learning, Labor, and Leisure, or Thinking, Doing, and Playing.  How much time to you devote to each slice?  If Thinking and Playing put together comprise no more than 10% of the pie, you may already be a workaholic.  If so, be careful, because if you are what you do, then when you’re not doing it, you must be nobody.

The Doctor's Chart

Question:  I hate my job.  What can I do?

Answer:  First of all, relax, because you’re in good company.  Recent surveys indicate that 7 of 10 working Americans would change jobs tomorrow if wishing would make it so.  (Employers worried about turnover, are you paying attention?)

Second, do some benchmarking.  No job is perfect, so use the 70-30 test.  If you enjoy 70% or more of your day to day work activities, hang on to what you’ve got.  But if you hate more than 30%, consider the fact that life is too short to spend 100,000 hours (the average person’s total time contribution to his or her job) at something you despise.

If you fail the 70-30 test, a professional career assessment is in order.  Business Development Group can help with that (we’re only a phone call or an email away).  But in the meantime, try this quick skills assessment.  Divide a sheet of paper into three columns.  In the left column, list things you do magnificently.  Use the middle column to note things you do adequately.  In the right column, enumerate things you should never be allowed to do without adult supervision.  Then ask yourself, does your current job play to your strengths?  As Peter Drucker once noted, it’s much easier to go from competence to excellence than to move from mediocrity to competence.

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