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- Are your board members as valuable as you?
- Should board members be elected “for life?”
- Fight for balance on your board!
- Your need for a board grows with complexity.
- Your board should protect you!
- Hire a consultant; ignore the advice!
- How to cheat legally on your tax return.
- Do you really need an accountant?
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Category Archives: Protecting the business
If you must lease an office, make it a short one!
Avoid long-term commitments! It is statistically true that at least half of the young companies funded by angel or venture investors will not survive three years from funding to demise, and more than that percentage will die with two years if … Continue reading
What’s your answer? Are remote workers productive?
We’ve been measuring & disagreeing since COVID. Do home-based employees work with the same dedication and productivity as those in office cubicles next to each other? That depends upon the management as much as the employee. I have a friend … Continue reading
Would you commit to an office lease today?
Always true: Rent your first, next, or continuing office with caution. Several years ago and before COVID’s changes, I became involved with a Southeast Asian company looking to expand into the United States. During the discussions with the CEO about … Continue reading
How to make a small problem into a big one.
Allowing small problems to escalate into big ones is simple. Just ignore the signs for long enough and the job is done. It takes far more energy to regularly review the key performance indicators you’ve established for each individual and … Continue reading
Why we should fire fast, not last!
Our first reaction to marginal performance. Here is one that takes a real leap for a younger manager or CEO to believe. After hiring someone with all the attendant enthusiasm followed by the training and learning curve, if an employee … Continue reading
Are you or your business “time bankrupt?”
Time bankruptcy results from the deliberate over-commitment of core resources. You’d know the symptoms, if not the name. You’re fighting to put out the fires from customer complaints, or incomplete work, or are suffering from an inability to focus upon … Continue reading
Posted in Protecting the business
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A personal story about quality control
So, I tell personal stories to show that we all should look for lessons learned by others. Here’s one that is “on me.” As my enterprise computer software company which produced innovative lodging systems for hotels and resorts grew quickly, … Continue reading
A heartbreaking story about time and money.
First, think about your time as money! We’ll get to my heartbreak in a minute. But first… There is a relationship between timeand money that is more complex than most managers think. Fixed overhead for salaries, rent, equipment leases and … Continue reading
Everything changes from concept to release.
You can take this headline as a rule, not an exception. You’ll recognize the truism, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy” first stated by German Field Marshall von Moltke in the 19th century. This variant of the … Continue reading
Ouch! If I had only learned this before losing millions!
Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. I love absolutes – statements with no wiggle room for gray-area responses. Well, here is one of those, and it deals with market research first and foremost. … Continue reading
