Business

The list of ways to kill morale is longer than the list of morale builders. It is far easier to kill than to build morale.

Nothing diminishes productivity as much as diminishing morale.

Nothing raises productivity as quickly and as cheaply as boosting morale.

It's that simple.

How? How does one build morale? Well, that depends a lot on how deeply morale has sunk. But if caught in time, a simple "good job" will do wonders. Even if ...
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Chris Reich
TeachU.com

Businesses are enamored with "metrics".  Management wants to measure and graph everything possible. It's fun to look at colorful graphs and shoot at performance shortfalls at business meetings. Johnson, it looks like your sales aren't trending in the right direction! Smith, your time per call is getting out of hand! Jones, your expense 46 category is higher than budget, what's your plan?

Management by bullets. I suppose, if the boss is blind reports must be presented ...
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I hear about bad things that happen at businesses all the time. Often those things are dismissed as "stuff happens" or "we all make mistakes". Often these big boo boos are attributed to Murphy's Law.

Here is a tale with no apparent easy fix.

There's a big construction project worth a few million dollars. You're in charge of preparing the bid. You go over and over and over the numbers. This project has over 3,000 components from ...
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Businesses have cut and budgets are still tight. Yes, there are some green shoots beginning to appear so things will probably get better but not at a fast pace.

The talent, those who make it all possible have borne the majority of the stress from this recession. They feel it most as they take pay cuts, furloughs and reduced benefits. They see friends and relatives lose jobs and it reminds them of how close to ...
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One of the biggest problems with many American companies is the loss of nimbleness. Corporations are so weighted by forecasts and metrics they no longer can react with agility. I believe too many business decisions are based on looking through the rear-view mirror. 

There are two serious problems with using past data to predict future results. First, historical performance, unless repeatable at will, is no indication of future results. Every investment must caution the potential ...
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One of the hardest lessons to learn in business is that you do not want every sale, deal, project that comes your way.

Some aren't worth the trouble. Some aren't worth the money. Sometimes you just don't like the people you'd have to work with.

Say no. Pass. I'm going to skip this one.

You immediately increase your value because not everybody can have you. You're putting up the velvet rope. Sorry, invitation only.

You will do ...
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Seeing a lot of fumbles at your business? Are the fumbles creating friction among your employees? In short, should things be running smoother?

When things are not going well, it's time to step away from all the silly MBA jargon and return to common sense. It's ridiculous to even utter the words "supply chain" if you can't get orders out the door in a timely manner. It's absurd to turn to 6-Sigma when everything seems to ...
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