The Importance of Conveying Your Message to the Successor

The immigration debate rages on, as today a federal judge put Arizona’s immigration law on hold, therefore upholding the idea that illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers, depending on your leaning, have rights in the U.S, namely the right to enter our country on their own terms. Again, I see this dynamic play out daily in the family business arena.  The solution to these problems is not demanding our rights, but understanding and living up to our responsibilities.  To read the end of this article, click here.

Watch Out for That New Best Practice. It May Not Be Right for You!

Much of the literature and buzz around best practices seems to presume that there is a universal business model or family governance structure that fits everything.  Personally, I haven’t found that to be true; so I generally do not recommend that a client, business, or family run out and adopt the latest and greatest approach to anything.  In fact, the greater the hype, the more likely I am to want to move away from it.  There’s something about a herd mentality that makes me want to wave the caution flag. To read the end of this article, click here.

Wipe Out Enablement Attitudes - Rights Versus Responsibilities

No matter where you stand on the immigration law, one thing is painstakingly clear. Our country is obsessed with protecting everyone’s rights with little to no concern for their responsibilities. Somehow we seem to suffer from affluence guilt that leads us to feel it is our responsibility to take care of everyone on the planet, and perhaps more accurately, that everyone on the planet has a right to be cared for by the U.S. To read the end of this article, click here.

The Key to Ending Business and Domestic Turf

Conflict and disagreement are natural human occurrences.  Sometimes they escalate to the level of a “turf war”.  The consequences may not always be fatal in terms of physical life and death, but all too often they lead to the emotional death of a relationship.  Sometimes it’s a domestic fatality, and sometimes it’s a business fatality.  The real tragedy is that neither has to occur. To read the end of this blog, click here.

Flexibility over Value - Is there a Shift in the Employment Teeter Totter?

As discussed in my previous post, our new economy has forced business’ to do more with less  causing the workforce to become more productive and resourceful.  The competition has created a contraction of margins that will not tolerate inefficiency, complacency, high wages or any presumption that future success can be achieved through practices of the past.  As a result, workforce competition has also increased and the rules have changed, causing the unemployment rate to rise. To read the end of this article, click here.

Putting Your Business on Steroids.

Some pretty famous people are back in the news for their alleged use of performance enhancing steroids.  That topic came up during a lunch with a client and a couple of her key advisors.  She turned to me and asked “Are there any steroids to enhance business performance?” To read the end of this article, click here.

Business and Profit- Doing More With Less

We’ve been hearing a great deal about the unemployment rate lately as political pundits try to cast blame and gain leverage based upon the current 9% to 10% unemployment rate. Evidentially for many years it has been presumed that the unemployment baseline was 3% to 4% and during good economic times it would rarely drop below 3%.   This dynamic gives some level of support to my personal theory that at least 3% of the US workforce is unemployable and the percentage is only increasing due to higher expectations. To read the end of this article, click here.