How to Organize Your Small Business Information  apps (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee) (Cross-posted on Sanera Camp on 5/15/2012) One of the toughest things for a small business owner to manage is the flow of information, whether it is business or personal. If you aren’t careful, you can swiftly get lost in a swamp of personal contacts, vendor payment information, IRS forms, and human resources transactional information like home addresses, number of dependents, and more. Throw in all the calls from everyone about getting your business on social media platforms, and things can suddenly look really overwhelming. The good news is that most business people also carry a very powerful resource around in their pocket. This would be your mobile phone – which you can transform into a powerful information management tool by simply downloading some simple low cost programs. 10 Must-Have, Small Business Apps Here’s a list of ten very powerful, mostly free tools that will help you keep your life and business information properly sorted . The apps on this excellent list , as well as one of the apps listed here were gathered by ...
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In academia, teachers and researchers are encouraged to take a sabbatical once every 7 years. It gives professors the chance to do something different, forge new relationships, and recharge their batteries and creative juices. This system works well for them. There's no such thing as a sabbatical though, in most jobs, and after 7 long years in the same job (and often even before then), employees commonly begin to lose interest and start looking elsewhere. This "7 year job itch" can affect people in any profession, in any economic climate, anywhere in the world. When it's time for a change, it's time for a change.  These strategies are like Anti Monkey Butt Powder with Calamine Lotion, but for employee retention. Stop the itch.
Flickr/djeo Unhappy faces, reduced social interaction, and frequent tardiness are telltale signs of burnt out, 7-year itch employees. The discontent associated with the mundane can build into frustration that ends in resignation. Keen managers and HR pros will make sure that this never happens. Surely you already know the advantages of retaining staff, there are many: Less time spent recruiting and onboarding, faster task completion, great ...
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For several years, there has been a rule-of-thumb, called “90-9-1″, that 90% of online participation in groups/community consists of “lurkers” or more politely, “passive participants”, and only 1% are active creators. Jacob Nielsen’s 2006 post on Participation Inequality provides a good overview of this phenomenon. All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don’t participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background. In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity. A recent BBC survey of 7,500 people shows significantly different results. 
Here we see that passive lurkers make up only 23% of participants; active (intense) participants have increased to 17%; and there is now an “Easy” group in the middle who, “ … respond largely to the activity of others. This includes replying, ‘liking’ and rating, all activities where there’s little effort, exposure ...
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William Lepiesza, Associate Director
Yes, the executive search business is one of the surest ways to meet the best and brightest professionals, on the top of their game…but as the law of averages suggests, there’s never a shortage of counter-balancing examples that leave us questioning the basic intelligence of humanity. Here are a few recent encounters that left us shaking our heads, and wondering: “Why???”
• Everyone has their own unique story, and part of that story is one’s family – the people who helped shape their early years, helped inform their choices, and continue to influence who they are today. We got a bit too much of the family picture, however, when my colleague – while on an interview trip through Germany – had a candidate arrive for his initial interview, arm-in-arm with spouse! Both proceeded to join my colleague at his table in the lobby, presumably for a “family meeting.” Taken aback, my colleague first chalked it up to a cultural misunderstanding, but took decisive action to cut things short when the spouse flagged down a hotel employee and ordered appetizers…
• Speaking of food, it’s understandable when candidates submit ...
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I can just hear some of you now, but in watching TV and reading the news I was hit with several points which made me question the direction our organization's are headed in. We strive to speak the philosophy that we want our employees to have full transparency into our organization. We expect our employees to be engaged in the processes. The we flip the coin and see stories like the following: 1) Local TV station ran a story about customer service. The owner of the business tells the reporter that if a customer complains directly to the company, they get less attention then if they post the same complaint on social media. In the same breath, we as organizations tell us that it is paramount that we cut off the conversation by limiting employee access to social media during work hours. 2) I for the most part shy away from discussing politics but there were several reports of misguided acts by politicians which had direct impact on the society in which we live. But in each case the acts were essentially thrown under the carpet. 3) The reports surfaced this weekend about the actions of the trade office of JP Morgan Chase. The CEO said that the Dodd-Frank ...
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Jane Hart asked readers “how regularly are you “learning” in the workplace?” Here are the top five ways that people learn, with my comments below on how this can be facilitated in the organization, either by management or the learning support group. Notice that these are all informal. The more formal methods, like courses, ranked much lower on the survey results. Email (keeping up to date inside the organization) Since email is the number one method of keeping up to date, find ways to make it easier or replace it with a world without email. Using internal blogs for any multi-recipient email is a start. That way it’s visible, in one permanent place, with all the comments attached. In-person conversations (keeping up to date inside the organization) Create space for people to talk. Regular company coffee breaks can be supplemented with white boards or flip charts to encourage knowledge sharing. Take pictures of what’s going on and post them. Photos can encourage conversation. Small nooks with comfortable seating invite conversations. Changing office layout can change behaviours and even encourage inter-departmental conversations. At ...
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Social media is a great thing. It allows us to connect with others and learn new things that will benefit our professional lives. But it can also be a huge time drain. Our time on social media must be optimized, so when we’re using it, we get the maximum benefit out of it. 
A reader recently asked me about social media short-cuts so I wanted to share with you a few things I use to stay productive when using social tools: OUTLOOK – I know this might sound silly but I’m an uber organized person. And I start hyperventilating when my in-box is cluttered with a bunch of notifications. So to stay organized, I’ve set up folders and rules with social media sites. Get a new follower on Twitter? It goes to my Twitter folder and when I have a moment I look at it. Same with my LinkedIn group updates. Goes straight into a folder. On a personal note, I also use this for shopping emails…so I’m not distracted by Living Social or Rue La La. Ha! BROWSER ADD-ONS – The next place I rely is my browser. I use Chrome, so I can really speak more to what it offers. But every browser offers add-ons to make life easier. The one I really like with Chrome is ...
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 Ethical behaviour, understanding complexity and acting in a responsible manner are not discretionary, they are imperatives in the 21st century.
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 “The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” Rensis Likert, American Educator and Organizational Psychologist Rensis Likert was one of America’s pioneers in the field of organizational behavior? Chances are good he offered these words above sometime between 1940 and 1960, a good while ago. They seem to me to be as true today as ever even when you consider the changes in the basics relationship between many employees and their employers. It is commonly said these days that there is no longer any loyalty shown by employers towards employees…was there ever, really, or were we confusing paternalism with loyalty? I think loyalty in its pure form may just be lying there waiting for us to pick it up and put it to use as a tool for building sustainable performance. There is nothing normative or judgmental in the way Rensis Likert expresses the power of loyalty here. This is pure ...
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In The Paradox of Performance Pay, Allan Hawke shows how it has clearly led to decreases in organizational performance. Peter Scholtes, who has researched and written extensively about performance, appraisal and pay, argues that such a performance ”management” regime is inherently the wrong thing to do because three faults are common to all variations on the theme: - It doesn’t work.
- It’s wrong to focus only on individuals or groups, because most opportunities for improvement involve systems, processes and technology.
- Performance ”management” is judgment, not feedback; it’s a hierarchical dynamic.
W. Edwards Deming called annual performance appraisals one of the five deadly diseases of management. Performance ratings are nothing more than a lottery, Deming said in 1984. This pertains to all levels in the organization. ANNUAL RATING OF PERFORMANCE - Arbitrary and unjust system
- Demoralizing to employees
- Nourishes short-term performance
- Annihilates team work, encourages fear.
Perhaps the performance appraisal treadmill is keeping organizations from testing out and adopting better management ...
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