Image credit: McKinsey Leadership: Leaders are Readers and Readers are Leaders
One of the things the new year offers is a time to reflect and to plan. The Central Florida Vistage group, a roundtable of CEO’s and business owners, discusses their “MERPS” – Mental, Emotional, Relational, Physical and Spiritual goals. One means to growth that transcends all categories is reading (or listening to) good books. Here’s what some global CEO’s are reading: McKinsey: What CEO’s Are Reading
Strombeck Solutions: Recruiting
For years Strombeck has been an active part of many client’s hiring of key financial staff. QuickBooks and Excel abilities, personality and intelligence profiles and background checks were part of our standard process. Recently we’ve joined forces with myStaffingPro to better post to top job boards, process candidates and deliver people solutions. If you’re filling a need in your financial staffing, talk to us today! Read more…
Image credit: Forbes People: 4 Stories Great Leaders Tell to Engage Their People
Classic management can tend toward engagement as ‘consequence management’ and carrots-and-sticks incentives. It can rely on almost Pavlovian conditioning. Some of that, to be sure, is needed – people want to tie outcomes to inputs, success to effort, rewards to sweat. But there’s also a human relational element that stories convey, which attach reward/success/outcome to “meaning.” And that more than ever is important to a new generation (see article on sales recruiting below, too. Forbes: 4 Stories Great Leaders Tell To Engage Their People
Leadership: Strategic Decisions: When Can You Trust Your Gut?
Winging it, vs the paralysis of analysis. To some there’s never enough data, to others experience/intuition is their guide. A “McKinsey Classic” from 2009 talks with two authors of an article in American Psychology in which they debate when and how to rely on intuition, engage dissent, utilize checklists – and a great nugget on doing a “pre-mortem” on new ventures/strategies. McKinsey: Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?
Image credit: Andrew Baker - Getty Images/Ikon Images Sales: Young Workers Don’t Want Sales Jobs. How to Convince Them Otherwise
In the 50’s and 60’s, the sales person was memorialized by Willy Lowman, in Death of a Salesman. Willy’s a sad tale of a ‘’grind it out” road warrior, getting long in the tooth. Go forward 50 years and the show Mad Men makes that generation’s advertising and sales look sexy, dramatic, exciting. But it’s still a look backward. Today’s generation looks to different values and priorities – things that can make a ‘sales’ job seem uninviting. Fortune: Young Workers Don’t Want Sales Jobs. How to Convince Them Otherwise
Image credit: Shutterstock Leadership: Delivering Negative Feedback Without Being a Jerk
Vision, passion, drive, fear, stress – it all comes in to play in the daily lives of business owners. And most won’t realize their vision without bringing along others to help them. The demands of the business can send you into two worlds – blurting out frustrations, or stuffing them in hopes they’ll repair themselves. Neither of those options is usually optimal. Here’s a few suggestions to address that staff behavior that’s driving you crazy. Entrepreneur: Delivering Negative Feedback to Employees Without Being a Jerk
Image credit: LinkedIn People: Five Ways to Check Your Hiring Blind Spots
Get the right people on the bus – that was Jim Collins advice in Good to Great. We all want that. But why do we misfire when we hire? Jack Welch takes a big picture look to remind us what the forest should look like while we’re wandering in the trees of recruiting. Jack Welch: 5 Ways to Check Your Hiring Blind Spots
Image credit: McKinsey Marketing: The Dawn of Marketing’s New Golden Age
Science, substance, story, speed, simplicity. We are leveraging data, adapting products, relating with relevance, faster and leaner than ever. A new golden age for marketing? For YOUR marketing? See how you’re current efforts align with the broader trends. McKinsey: The Dawn of Marketing’s New Golden Age
Taxes: Hiring Your Kids to Reduce Taxes
What better way as a business owner to teach your kids about the business, build a sense of responsibility – and save taxes to boot? (Not to mention keep them busy over the summer) By hiring them in the business (they must do real, age appropriate work), you can shift some income to them at a tax rate of 0%. Hmmm, honey, maybe we should have a couple more, eh? Forbes: Tax Benefits For Hiring Your Own Child
Image credit: Hero Images / Getty Images People: New DOL Overtime Rules
So we wrote before on how the Department of Labor had drafted some new regulations on clasifying employees for purposes of overtime. Last month they made final regulations to take effect December 1, 2016. Bottom line: if you’ve got anyone paid less than $46,475 as a “Salaried” (overtime-exempt) employee, you’d better take a look at the new regulations. Entrepreneur Magazine: Here’s How the New Overtime Rules Will Affect Entrepreneurs
