MAJOR GOSSIP, LOOSE LIPS,

(& BIZ TLK TXT MSGS)

ROCK FOUNDATIONS

The heading above is not a code. It is what it is. Misdirected and misunderstood and miscommunicated talk ruins companies. It rocks the business foundation like an earthquake. Some survive. Many don’t.

Small business failures are blamed on as many reasons as there are small business, yet every single one of them reduces itself to poor management.

Go ahead and accuse under-capitalization, faulty equipment, incompetent staffing, ineffective marketing, convoluted financing, the rotten economy, and your mother-in-law, but the truth will out:

The true culprit, inevitably, is  poor management!

And heaven knows the failure rates alone walk with a heavy foot. As fuzzy as the attempts to grasp accurate figures, it is commonly accepted that only two-thirds of all small business startups survive the first two years and fewer than 50% survive to become four-year-olds!

If you’ve got some startup ideas,

you may want to read that statement again

. . . and the next one!

Toss in that on the average a business startup will not likely break even financially (if it survives long enough) until year six, and it’s often quoted by the inept SBA that nine out of eleven new businesses fail in the first ten years! It’s no wonder that those among the weak-willed tend to flock toward cushy government jobs.

One of the leading indicators of poor management is poor people leadership, which translates to poor communications, which translates to that whole “Loose Lips Sink Ships” expression — too many people talking too much too indiscretely to too many others, both inside and outside the company.

And the rapid onset of text messaging has both

amplified the risks and raised the stakes.

When employees are unhappy, they talk. Unhappy employee talk creates waves of negativity, which can ultimately build to tsunami proportions. The business goes down and the owner throws up his or her hands proclaiming some vague reason. But, in the end, it’s poor management.

Savvy business leaders know that it’s not always money issues that harbor employee resentment. They know that happy employees are people who are challenged and who are given responsibility.

Happy employees are people who naturally seek fair compensation, but who will –more often than you might imagine– settle for frequent (and genuine) praise and small, frequent expressions of gratitude. And happy employees don’t indulge themselves in orange-alert-level chatter. They don’t host or entertain gossip.

When employees like their jobs, they also talk. And that talk is positive. It cultivates sales, community respect, and more employee positiveness. So, there’s some kind of choice here?

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Hal@Businessworks.US

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

If Oct/Nov/Dec hasn’t

heated up your business,

 Jan/Feb/Mar won’t either!

I sit here in an area of the country that –until last year’s three-foot accumulation– hadn’t had any snow to speak of for over 75 years, contemplating the seven hours of driveway shoveling I just completed of another 1-2-foot-plus, on the day after Christmas.

One can’t help, I’m fairly sure, in circumstances like this, having one’s mind drift ever so creepy-crawly, to Ex (Thank Heaven!) Vice President Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning predictions of global warming.

This recognition of course came well after his claims that he invented the Internet. Duh! It’s hard to tell which of the three is the bigger farce: Gore, the Nobel Prize or global warming.

Anyway, it made me think about “Chicken Little.”

Remember him?

He ran around the neighborhood yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Well, let’s have none of that, says our current Administration, hellbent on selling us all into business success by throwing good money after bad at corporate buffoon giants.

Thank Heaven, again! (Yikes! Twice in one blog post–  this “Thank Heaven!” is for Ford Motor Company. Thank you, FORD, for sassing it out and protecting Henry’s entrepreneurial legacy by telling the White House where to take a hike!).

Yes, I am a lifelong Ford owner, but No, I am not a White House hater. I am a realist. I am a serious skeptic of all who would think they could step on and over small business owners and entrepreneurs with the naive convictions that stimulus tax-dollars tossed to big business (and to frivolous socialistic-based enterprises and government agencies) would turn the economy around.  

Only small businesses create jobs. Period.   

Oh, and did I mention the flood of money that beleaguered, hardworking business owners and managers don’t even get to look at while being taxed into the dirt, while incompetent government agencies award themselves salary increases?

Well, yes, there have been some token awards possible through the pathetic SBA, assuming the struggling small business owner could afford the lawyer and accountant needed to process the truckloads of paperwork. 

Did we notice part of the government’s efforts to sell the public on economic success has been to push the media to glow with positive business talk . . . “the greatest holiday retail shopping returns in history,” I heard . . . while businesses continue to die in record numbers? 

Where does this leave YOU? If your last quarter of 2010 was great, congratulations! Odds are good that your first quarter of 2011 will also be fiscally productive.

If your last quarter of 2010 sucked eggs, odds are pretty good that the first quarter of 2011 will not break any revenue or profit levels. Ah, but hope, the White House tells us, is just around the corner.

Here’s the bottom line: Hope gets you nowhere in reality. Action is what moves business forward. And businesses that move forward drive the economy forward. (Yes, this is apparently too complex a concept for government to grasp!)

So, what’s preventing you from taking the action steps that you know need to be taken, that perhaps you’ve been shying away from to avoid making waves? Hmmm?

What will happen if you simply choose to turn up the heat on your challenges to employees, your opportunities to vendors and suppliers, and your service to customers and clients?

You don’t need the government to tell you what to do to make your business work!

You need only to choose to step up to the plate in your industry or profession, in your marketplace, and in your community.

Not being overly cautious is not the same as being careless.

Reasonable risks are what got you here in the first place.

The first quarter of 2011 is yours for the taking.

    Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just do it!   

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www.TheWriterWorks.com

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!