Super Jobs for You

Every business owner should be on a quest to reduce expenses. Every organization is leaking money and costs can be reduced by 6 to 10 percent simply by doing things differently. Those changes will likely have minimal impact as to how an organization operates but will change the cash flow and profitability immediately for the better.

However, it does make sense to spend money when the return on investment will yield solid, positive results. Here are several places where an owner should consent to spending money for the good of the organization, even in difficult economic times.

The first is a fresh coat of paint. This is a metaphor for getting the workplace clutter free, cleaned up and spruced up. Included in this wise investment would include painting the walls, replacing stained or missing ceiling tiles, replacing burned out light bulbs and lighting ballasts, washing windows, replacing worn carpeting, putting art on the walls and all the other things to make the workplace look physically more visually appealing.

People are happier and more productive when the workplace is neat and clean. It doesn’t cost much to clean a place up and the morale will improve quickly with this kind of investment.

The second is in providing business cards for every employee. If you want to demonstrate to those on your payroll that they are important, get them business cards. Put their title on it and make them proud of the position they hold, the job you are paying them to do and show them that you are happy to have them as employees of the organization you lead.

The third is an all employee company lunch held on the premises. This is not a business lunch but an opportunity for all employees to gather together and be in one place at one time. As the owner, you do not have to give a speech, or share any news. All you need to do is be present and to tell each employee, to their face and as a group, “Thank you for your individual and team effort; your hard work and dedication has not gone unnoticed. It is sincerely appreciated.” Say nothing more. Smile and be sincere.

The fourth is to create a theme for each quarter of the year. Choose something that you want employees to focus on and to improve. For example, in the fourth quarter of the year, the theme of every organization could be “We’re Doing More Than You Expect.” Let each department decide on five things they need to do to go above and beyond for external or internal customers.

On the front of the shirt, put the company logo and the name of the theme. On the back, for each department, list the five things they will do better between October 1 and the end of the year. Pick one day each week when every employee (including the owner) is required to wear the shirt while at work. Employees will wear they shirt just 14 times before it being retired. The next quarter, pick a new theme and begin the process again.

The fifth is for the owner to identify something to thank individual employees for doing because it sets a good example for others in the organization to follow. Assume that you have identified three employees who have not been late to work all year. Write a note to each of these employees thanking them for their work ethic and tell them how much you appreciate it.

Mail the note to their homes where it will be shared with family and friends. Let the grapevine take over, as it will, and in the following years you should see a reduction of tardiness.

The sixth is to put a moratorium on meetings with more than three people attending. Give up, cold turkey, meetings for two weeks and see if productivity improves, gossip is reduced and people stay focused on what they are supposed to be doing.

The seventh, which won’t cost a single cent, is to take the time, over a period of time, to visit with each employee, and thank them for being a member of the team. Not everyone should be thanked for working hard (some people don’t work as hard as you would like them to). Not everyone needs to be thanked for doing a good job (some don’t do a good job; some do merely an acceptable job). But everyone on the payroll can be thanked for being on the team, and the owner is the best person to do this.

These are simple investments that will yield strong results that will improve morale and productivity. Your job as the leader is to set an example. There is no time like the present to get started.

Super Job Information gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Zinc Die Casting Jobs look at this website. This Zinc Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for zinc castings.

Labor Day officially marks the end of summer and the wearing of white shoes. Yet those in Entrepreneurial America know that it is past time to get back to work. Thoughts have already turned to achieving the goals set at the beginning of the year.

There are four plus months left, still plenty of time to turn things around and make the numbers before the end of the year. Here is the recipe for doing just that.

First, get employees back on the schedule. Summer means a more flexibility; people arriving late and leaving early; taking days off and vacation time. Reinforce what time work starts, how long breaks are, what the lunch schedule is, and when leaving time. This includes management and sales; chances are they took advantage of the summer too.

Second, in the next two weeks, make sure that each employee has had a short, to the point performance evaluation. This means a quick but serious conversation about what the employee is doing well, what needs improvement, and what the employee needs to be doing to improve. Be specific.

Third, get crystal clear about expectations for the rest of the year. Sit with each manager (and each manager with each of their employees) to communicate and agree on specific objectives to be achieved by the end of the year. The owner has to be clear about what they want before any meetings can take place; otherwise every meeting will be a waste of time.

Fourth, calendar regular meetings with managers and ask that that your managers hold regular meetings with their direct reports. Verify these meetings are being held by asking for a schedule. Tell each manager that you will be sitting in on at least one meeting they have with their direct reports each month to make certain they are being held.

Fifth, review the list of lost customers for the first seven months of the year. Assign someone to verify why the customer is no longer buying. It could be that the company went out of business or that their buying cycle has increased in length but until it is confirmed that they can no longer buy, proceed with the idea that they can buy but haven’t. Find out why.

Sixth, review the prospect pipeline. This is where many companies fall down during difficult times; they make the guess that no one is buying when in fact many companies are still doing fine; they just have not been contacted by your company.

Seventh, start a sales training on prospecting. Every company needs more prospects for new business. One of the best ways to learn something is to have to teach it, so have the entire sales team take one aspect of the sales prospecting cycle and create a lesson to teach the others in the department.

Eighth, take time to review profitability by customer. Each customer should be categorized; most companies have a ranking system of A, B or C depending on various criteria. Each month take time to review those customers in each category and see what can be done to improve profitability. One way to improve profits is to find additional products or services to sell to existing customers. This requires broadening the base of advocates within a customer organization, not always easy but essential.

Ninth, every organization leaks money. Reducing unneeded outlays pays dividends for years. Saving $100 a month on seldom used telephone services, as an example, saves $1200 a year for every year going forward. Set up an incentive program for employees to share in the savings. Every dollar saved goes right to the bottom line.

Tenth, focus on alignment. The job of a leader is to get everyone focused and moving in the same direction. People need to know what the company goals are. Tell them. Be specific. Make it measurable. Ask how they can help achieve company goals. Listen. Appreciate the answers. Communicate the goals. Hand goals to people in writing so that they know what the goals are. Remind them every day until they are tired of hearing it.

Let these words be your driving force for the rest of the year: “What we have is based upon moment-to-moment choices of what we do. In each of those moments, we choose. We either take a risk or move toward what we want, or we play it safe and choose comfort. Most of the people, most of the time, choose comfort. In the end, people either have excuses or experiences; reasons or results; buts or brilliance. They either have what they wanted or they have a detailed list of all the rational reasons why not.”

Super Job Information gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Zinc Die Casting Jobs look at this website. This Zinc Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for zinc castings.

Baseball is one of America’s leading sports and it also a significant business. The thirty teams in Major League Baseball have an average value of $482 million, but one team, the New York Yankees, is worth an estimated $1.5 billion. In 2008, ticket sales and television revenue grew to $5.8 billion. That number is expected to fall this year due to the decline of discretionary spending by consumers.

You don’t have to be a fan to admire the financial success of the sport. What you can also admire is the understanding that baseball is a business of talent. Businesses can learn from baseball about how to acquire, focus, manage and coach players on their own teams.

The Goal

Every team begins the season with a stated goal. This goal is set by the ownership of the franchise and it is communicated to everyone in the organization.

Not every team has the same goal; the Oakland A’s have a stated goal to get into the playoffs which take place after the regular 162 game season. Other teams, such as the New York Yankees, expect to win the World Series each year.

Teams that say they are “rebuilding” don’t set specific goals. As a result, many of those teams don’t do as well as those teams that set and announce their goals.

The Scoreboard

As the 162 game season progresses, every stakeholder (players, management, coaching staff, fans, media) sees exactly how the team is doing against the stated goal. This is done through a report called “the standings.”

During the course of each game played, those same stakeholders can see what is happening by paying attention to “the scoreboard.” The scoreboard lists how every player is performing. This is the equivalent of an ongoing, visible, performance evaluation.

Unfortunately, most businesses do not publicize their goals, internally or externally because in most organizations, goals do not exist. They also don’t often have an internal version of a scoreboard. Goals and scoreboards improve performance.

The General Manager’s Role

The title does not explain what this job is all about. The GM’s job is talent acquisition.

A baseball team is no different than most businesses; having the right people in the right spot is one of the most critical components of success. The key difference is that most businesses don’t take the time to focus on people except when there is a vacancy, performance issues or a disciplinary problem.

The GM is not afraid to trade a player to another team in exchange for a player or players that can help them win in the short term. The GM is also able to demote someone to the minor leagues if they need improvement in some aspect of hitting, pitching or fielding.

What the Manager Does

The job of the manager is to use the players on the 25 man roster to win baseball games. The focus of the manager is on winning during the season and post season.

For the manager, this means he must use his resources to his advantage literally play by play, pitch by pitch, inning by inning, game by game, series by series.

The manager is the tactical leader on the playing field. A game of baseball is similar to a chessboard and the manager’s role is to move the players around the line-up card, the field and the batting order to win as many games as possible, focusing on one game at a time.

What the Coaches Do

A baseball team accepts the fact that the players on the team have talent. The role of the coach is to maximize the talent of each player in whatever role they play; as a fielder, hitter or pitcher.  A team has pitching, hitting, fielding and base running coaches, all critical for player development on an ongoing basis.

Most businesses believe that the manager can also coach, and that is true in limited cases. Managers aren’t usually concerned or trained in coaching methods; managers are usually just focused on winning in the short term. However, most businesses cannot define what “winning” is.

What Can You Do

If a baseball team is built on talent, so is your business. How much time is spent in acquisition of potential staff members? How much time is spent setting achievable goals and communicating those goals? What kind of scoreboard and standings are available to the “players” on your team; is winning defined? How much time is invested coaching talented people to become better? What are you doing as the owner to become better? Do you have a team or simply a group of people who work for the same organization?

Super Jobs For You gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for a Die Casting Job look at this website. This Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for manufacturing.

Challenging times requires, for survival and success, to do things differently and to do different things. If your business at the end of July is not where you want it to be, don’t “stay the course” but take another look at what you are doing and what you are telling your employees to do and make changes as needed, as soon as possible.

The worst mistake is confusing activity with progress. Motion by itself takes you nowhere. Are you, the owner, avoiding deadlines, shuffling stacks of paper, having long, unproductive conversations, holding lengthy meetings during the workday and wonder why, at the end of the day, week, month and quarter nothing of significance has changed? It is because the focus is on activity not progress. What is needed is a plan to move forward.

Owners often don’t know what to do so they freeze and fail to act. This manifests itself in being focused on not knowing what to do, except knowing that a ad decision is to be avoided, so no decision is made. The only thing that happens is that the situation stays the same or gets worse; it does not improve and it does not go away. In the end, a decision still has to be made, and sometimes the passing of time has reduced the options available for a positive outcome. Speed up the decision making in challenging times.

Is the process more important than the result at your company? Most of the time owners get hung up on making sure that the process is solid, maybe too solid, that there is a failure to understand that most of the time, the result is all that matters! It is the responsibility of the owner to make clear what the desired results are.

Owners fail to measure what is important. Every organization has leading and lagging indicators. Most owners don’t know the difference and how one can impact the other. Because they don’t understand the importance of what to measure, and when to measure, they measure nothing at all or something of insignificance. Decide what the performance indicators are and begin measuring them.

Too often owners stay in their comfort zone. These people fail to understand what it is that is necessary to learn to be more successful. Because owners don’t know what they need to learn, many opt to learn nothing at all. Status quo is the default position of the learning activity, which really means moving backward, because so much knowledge that impacts a business is being generated each day. The areas of weakness should be the first area of learning for an owner.

Owners believe meetings are for decisions. Meetings are for information exchange, not for decision making. Owners make decisions. Don’t hold meetings with the idea that somehow a group of people will reach a decision, they won’t. Hold a meeting to decide how a decision you have made can best be implemented.

Owners hire and promote people thinking they will change. People don’t change that much; they are who they are. People may change if forced to by circumstances, but even then it is very, very difficult. Often they end up being the same person they always were. And, angry that the owner asked them to be someone they aren’t.

Some owners expect others to solve their problems. Like the fairy tales of childhood, people wait for someone else to arrive on a white horse, wearing a white hat, just in the nick of time. The corollary to this is that owners blame others (competition, incompetent vendors, employees, the world) for everything that has and is going wrong in the company. Accept the responsibility for ownership and deal with it all: the good, the bad and the ugly.

All too often, owners fail to face the brutal facts of our current reality. Ignoring reality is a dangerous habit that usually leads to disaster. Life is not fair, competition is fierce, and the customer doesn’t always pay their bills when they should, and employees call in sick when they are not. Face reality and deal with it in a cold, factual manner. This can be done every month with a one page sheet of paper divided in half; one the left make a list of what is working, and on the right, what isn’t.

Super Job For You gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Cast Parts Jobs look at this website. This Castings Blog will give you more information you can use for manufacturing.