The Toxic Employee What are the costs of a toxic employee? In one large company, the cost was an entire previously successful division. As a small business, can you afford a hit like that? Toxic employees can come in many forma and some of them are not obvious. THE HELPER Or, also known as the…
Win and Keep Customers More and more, Customers want to know that the providers of their goods and services are doing something to clean up the mess. What mess? Our increasingly unhealthy air, food, and water. An ever-growing amount of waste and landfills. A squandering of natural resources. For years in production environments, I would…
My friend is a teacher in an elementary school. One of her young students was grateful for the extra help she gave him on a project. He gave her a Thank You note. It started, Dear [insert name here], Thank you so much for [insert action here]. He had the right idea but missed a…
So, who are “THEY?” They are the people on the other side of the table, Whether they are a Customer or Client, an Investor, or an Employer, they all want to know the same three basics. Are they going to benefit? If they’re a potential customer or client, is their “bottom line” going to grow?…
A bunch of us from my Toastmasters club planned to go to a comedy club where Will Durst was scheduled early in his career. When we got there, Will Durst had been postponed but we settled in for an entertaining evening anyway. A couple of guys from New Jersey came on the stage. They knew…
“This is ridiculous! Why would you write such crap?” Not the response I expected after precisely documenting the desoldering process. “I wrote exactly what’s happening in the lab across the street.” The Director of Quality knocked her chair over in her rush to get to the other building, yelling into her cell phone to the…
Working with Startups for the last 17 years, I’ve heard this many times when I ask about their competition. “I don’t have any competition. No one is doing what I’m doing.” My response is always the same. A broom will beat out a vacuum cleaner if the Customer lives in a cave with no power….
“The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure:…
“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” ? Eleanor Roosevelt “What if …?” is the first step to getting where you want to be. Sometimes, the solution will be as simple as the story about the…