"Management" Posts
Does Your Balance Sheet Have An Asset Called Social Capital?
By Ken DiPrima
Time and time again, we read about a new spectacular company that, just a few short years ago, was started in someone’s garage, financed with a meager $700 from personal savings or a gift from a friend or relative, that quickly skyrocketed into a huge, successful company worth millions of dollars.
How did they do that? What makes them so very different from the millions of companies that start up every year that either fails or flounders for a period of time, until the owner decides to do something else?
Were Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg just lucky, or …
Learning and Training Beyond the Classroom
By Ken DiPrima
At a college graduation, I was introduced to a young man who had just earned an MBA. As I was congratulating him on his wonderful accomplishment, he said something chilling to me. “I’m so sick of studying. I swear that I’m never going to read another book in my life.” He was quite satisfied that the education he just completed had filled his knowledge chest with all the skill sets he needed to succeed in the business world. He was set for life.
If this new MBA recipient remains true to his word, he will start falling backwards in …
Understanding the Life-Cycle of a Business
By Ken DiPrima
There are few constants in business, but one is always present; change. Every business goes through various common stages of corporate existence during its evolutionary process. This movement, called the Business Life-Cycle, includes the startup and initial growth stage, the expansion or rapid growth stage as it moves into new markets, the mature operational stage, and the eventual decline as consumer interest in their product wanes. What occurs within the company during this decline will either result in a rebirth of the company and a resumption of its growth, or the eventual death of the enterprise.…
What Are My Chances?
By Ken DiPrimaIn 2014 Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, challenged the betting world by announcing his own bracket contest for the Annual March Madness; The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. He offered $1 Billion to anyone who correctly picked the winner of each of the tournament’s 63 games. Each year hundreds of thousands of people make their picks in brackets offered a variety of different places—from the office pools to the March Madness junkies, through major newspapers and sports channels. Mr. Buffet’s bracket challenge had an extremely large payoff, but only for perfection. There are winners in the rest of the pools, usually …
A Good Working Environment
By Ken DiPrima
All too often, companies hire large masses of people in order to fill high turnover slots on their personnel rosters with little regard to the employees that they hired or for the ultimate success of the company. Hiring and training costs eat into precious profits and, frequently, fail to deliver the desired outcome.
What steps can a company take to make certain that these two vital functions more successful and long lasting?
If you think that change is hard for clients to accept and implement, just think how difficult it is for new employees to become acclimated and productive in …
“Say It Ain’t So, Joe.”
By Ken DiPrima
“Say it ain’t so, Joe.” So goes the legendary question asked of ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson after he was accused of being part of the ring of Chicago White Sox players who ‘threw’ the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Before being banned for life from baseball for his actions, Jackson was, at the time, among the game’s super stars with a lifetime batting average of .356 in a short 13 year span. He hit an incredible .408 in 1911, his first full major league season. No one wanted to believe that he could have been involved.
And, then, there …
I Won’t Change, Don’t Make Me…
By Ken DiPrima
Every time, that I hear someone say, “I don’t need to change what I’m doing, even though, I’m not succeeding,” I think about the southern Illinois town of Shawneetown. You’ve heard the clichéd definition that insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different results.
Here’s an example of how intransigence can destroy lives, communities and, literally, break the bank.
Past Success Does Not Predict Future Performance
Shawneetown, Illinois, one of the oldest towns in the state, is located on the shore of the Ohio River. Early residents established a ferry service across the river and Shawneetown …
How A New Perspective Revolutionized Automotive Manufacturing
By Tom Ryan
Most people learn from their history books that Henry Ford revolutionized the manufacture of automobiles by introducing a moving assembly line in order to increase production and lower costs. This is true. What the history books don’t reveal is that this idea was NOT Henry Ford’s!
Here’s the real story behind how Henry Ford utilized a new viewpoint to ‘assemble’ cars, which ultimately changed history:
The idea actually came from William ‘Pa’ Klann, one of Ford’s engineers, who had visited the Swift & Company’s slaughterhouse in Chicago. There, Klann had viewed what he called a ‘disassembly line’ for dressing beef. …
Is Your Business Friendly?
By Zach Miller
Thumbtack, a consumer service for finding and hiring local businesses, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on education and entrepreneurship, recently released the results of their Small Business Friendliness Survey. The study measured data from over 12,000 small business owners and provides insight regarding the impact of friendliness towards customers as it relates to a business’ overall success.
This study demonstrates the importance between business friendliness and business success, as the former is directly correlative to customer loyalty, according to the survey.
For many businesses, in both B2B and B2C, customer loyalty is determined by …
Beat the Meeting Blues: 10 Tips to Improve Meetings
By Zach Miller
For too many employees, the weekly Monday meeting is the longest two hours of the day. They may drag their feet to the conference room, yawn during the presentation, check their missed texts throughout the meeting, and contribute minimally to the conversation in order to leave an uncomfortable position as early as possible.
The team meeting is not just a mandatory event—it has utility that should directly benefit the participants and the company. When a meeting is regarded as a nuisance, however, the functionality is lost and the benefits disappear. To best take advantage of the meeting, here are ten …
