Business Resources HRC

What Salary to Pay Job Seekers and New Employees

2011-04-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann

What Salary to Pay Job Seekers and New Employees

In my numerous business reading on the concerns of small business operators, one of the common statements often recurring is that of employees and workers expecting too high wages.

One business owner recently said that job seekers unrealistically expect a starting salary of $25 to $30 an hour. They’d rather collect cheques from the government rather than getting $15 - $17 per hour.

The employer went on to say that there should be a “local” report that states what the current earnings are. Well, there usually is in most places. It needs to be researched through various resources within your area.

However, what I want to point out right now is a way to gauge what is fair which can be used by both the employer and the employee.

First of all, the range mentioned above depends on what it is. A starting salary for an executive is not high at $25 to $30. If an individual who has 10 to 15 years experience as an executive director, for example, applies for a job, that person would be right in expecting a continuity of salary at that level.
A starting salary of $15 - $17 would actually be unreasonably low.

But, in a rural community with low economic scenarios, it might be a good deal. I’ve seen plenty of folks moving from the big city to a small community having to take a cut of 50%, but they were happy for whatever reason (a purposeful change of life, a semi-retirement situation, etc.)

What is a “starting salary” as the business operator refers to above? Let’s analyze this for a moment.

In my book “Contextual Communication, Organization and Training”, I have a chart of salary grade. Here’s what it looks like:

The chart is the 6-divisions of a business with the center point being the President level; the next circle around it being the Executive level, the next Manager/Assistant level, etc. The levels work upward from 1 to 5.

Within each of the levels, there are 3 sub-levels of Junior, Intermediate and Senior, as you can see in the second column. These represent departments or job functions within each of the levels.

The salary grades work along the sub-levels of Jr. Int. and Sr. in 3 grades per level. This gives a chance to move people up with responsibility as they are able, along with relative salary increases. It is a continuous incentive to incrementally reward as responsibility is given. (Skilled people need to be moved fast or they will quit.)

So, starting from the entry level of “Support” positions, in any of the divisions, the grades read in groups of 3 as 1, 2, 3 for the Level 1; 4, 5, 6 for the Level 2, etc. – see the third column.

Depending on the type and size of business you are, you start your Grade 1 accordingly. For example, if you are a small business, you can start at minimum wage of let’s say $8 per hour. So you would have $8.00 hourly rate at the bottom, moving up by $1 increment through the Salary Grade to the President at $22.

Now you would add a range within each level to allow for experience and skills a candidate/employee might have at any level (See the column next to the Hourly $ of Level 1, it shows the job pays $8 but you have a range of $9 and $10 in case you have someone with higher experience who applies for that job. The same runs up to the top position.

Then look at the next examples… the next set has a Start point of $10 an hour, and the next, $12. You can manipulate these however fits your situation. A larger organization may start at a minimum wage but go up the grades in increments of $2, or $1.50. Or you might go up $0.50 -$0.75 in Level 1 and $0.75 - $1 at Level 2 and $1 - $1.50 at level 3, and so on… until you see what comes up at the top. Then you ask yourself is that in line. If so, you’ve got your Salary Grade Scale – if it is not in line, you make the changes on your Excel sheet until you have the right figures.

The point is that when the business owner mentioned at the beginning of the article said that $25 to $30 is unreasonable for a starting salary, well at what level is the job? Are we talking about a Support, level 1 job or a Manager/Technical position at Level 3, or the President position at level 5?

If your Salary Grade matches the local economy and competition at a similar or equivalent Level, then it’s fine. Obviously, the candidate/employee’s expectation has to fit within these criteria. You cannot compare a small rural community to the salary grades of the large cities, or the high and low state of the economy of any given regions. Neither can one compare a small business with a large corporation’s Salary Grade.

There is more to all this, but at least with this tool, one can be more aware of what salary to pay job seekers and employees. /dmh

Article copyright(c)Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes and including the following bio:

Diane M. Hoffmann is owner/manager of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training" "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Press Release

2011-03-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Internet Writer Awarded Diamond Level Recognition

Campbell River, BC, March 14, 2011 -- Diane M. Hoffmann of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications has reached the highest author level at EzineArticles publishers.

The Diamond level is a status that can only be earned by sending in high quality articles. Only a small fraction of the thousands of authors ever obtain this level. Diane also recently completed a writing marathon to produce 100 articles in 100 days which she divided into her various areas of expertise: online and offline business, verbal/nonverbal communication, home/office staging and decorating, health/nutrition and theology.

EzineArticles is the trusted Internet publisher of best quality original articles. It provides a searchable database of hundreds of thousands of quality content that email newsletter publishers can use for inclusion within their next newsletters. You can see Diane's articles at http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dr._Diane_Hoffmann web site.
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Looking for a specific book?
Check for it here and order it now through this convenient link:

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Where Will The Money Come From to Start a Business?

2011-03-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Where Will The Money Come From to Start a Business?

by Diane M. Hoffmann
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications (HRC)

Where Will The Money Come From to Start a Business?

At some point, after you’ve decided that you would like to start a business, and after you’ve brainstormed the type of business it’s going to be, your question will be "How much money will it take to start and operate the business and do I have the money for it?” If the answer to the last question is ‘no’, then the next question will be “Where do I get the money?”

At this point, I don’t know where you are financially. The answer to that last question depends on a lot of things going on in your personal life. For instance, are you presently working and you will start this business part-time, which means that you have some income coming in while you start-up your business? Or are you out of work, with some money or without any money?

There is also the consideration that some businesses take more money than others to start. For instance an Internet business running out of your home may require less money to start than a physical business requiring high inventory or one-on-one, time-consuming service.

A client of mine recently asked me to do a financial projection for a new business. She explained to me that she will start small in charging the fees for her services and work up from there. She couldn‘t see herself charge upward of $25-$35 an hour to get jobs from her personal contact prospectives.

However, when you do a financial projection, you don’t start it small, you start it where the fee is that will cover the operation.

For example, if an established competitor charges $100 an hour for professional services which adds up to $126,000 a year revenue, but you say well, I won’t charge that much to start (which is what my client’s thinking was), then you will fall short in the end.

If you charge, let’s say $50 an hour just because you’re starting out new, you will end up with $63,000 and if your operating costs are going to be half of that, you will end up with $31,500 before your salary. On top of that, you also have to make provisions for the fact that you will not achieve all your projected sales in the first year, plus you will have start-up costs over and above your normal operating costs. So what is left is what you will have for salary for yourself.

So, on the contrary, you have to charge whatever your financial projection is going to tell you to charge in order to cover all of the start-up costs, direct costs, operating expenses and your salary. Otherwise you might as well forget about it because you will run out of money in your first year. There is always some initial losses that you will have to carry forward and cover into your second year. But you want to minimize that realistically right from the beginning.

This brings me to the question at the beginning of this article, “Where do I get the money?” Once you know how much you will need, you can start looking for that money. There are people from local assistance economic development community programs that you can approach, probably the best place to start because they will even help you put together a financial projection and business plan.

There are banks if you already have some relationship with a bank. There are private venture capital entrepreneurs who are looking for good business opportunities. There are friends and relatives that may be in a financial position to help you out.

As a friend of mine says when she is faced with having to get money to make money, "I don't say I can't afford it, I say how can I afford it." And then she gets very creative about how to do it. This is quite a common trait amongst entrepreneurs. When you spend money for your business, it's an investment. It's not a frivolous expense. So you will have to decide what you need to do yourself. And then move on to your next step.

I recently attended a local Chamber of Commerce networking event and was talking to the loan officer of a local bank. He was saying that right now they are doing a lot of small business loans, because a lot of people are starting their own businesses in these corporate cut backs and high unemployment times.

I you are unemployed and need money fast, one way could be to look at what you know or can do that you can sell right now to make some cash. That's where you get creative. What can you offer your community? You could offer seminars in some expertise area you have learned through your working career. Or you could offer physical services like cutting grass, cleaning yards, picking up junk with a pick up truck. Get some flyers printed up and pass them out consistently.

Keep on asking, keep on seeking and keep on knocking, one thing will lead to another and a door will open somewhere./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

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Simple Things Can Improve Communication and Cost Between Corporate Departments

2011-03-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

Simple Things Can Improve Communication and Cost Between Corporate Departments

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d/th
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

Administrative and management communication goes on in all departments of an organization. In most companies, there is one department that specializes in providing "administration" or “logistics” support, guidance and standards to all other departments -- at least there should be.

However, some of the most obvious and simple-to-fix problems are often ignored.

In one company's credit and collection department, I remember a problem the department had with customer reference numbers on invoices. It was the local administration department's responsibility to provide local billing and credits.

Many of the invoice information originated from an out-of-the-country head office. Instead of using the customer invoice numbers, they would use their own internal work order numbers which did not refer to the customer's number in the local system.

When customers called regarding billing of an invoice, their reference numbers could not be located because they used the head office work order number system. This created constant problems, and an enormous amount of time was wasted in finding the documentation, phoning the head office and checking the local files to match the head office work order numbers with the local billing numbers. Hours were spent this way everyday but nobody did anything about it.

Yet the solution was so simple. The administration people needed to implement a change immediately that all billing requires the original customer work order numbers to appear on the local invoices. These numbers could be tagged with a separator, or simply entered in a separate line.

Now, if a customer was talking to head office referring to their work order number and then spoke to the local invoicing company about payments, both numbers would be on the same invoice. Presto! It’s right there for all to see. No more chasing after the paperwork to trace down the information. Communication cost cut in half the time. If it took the clerk 20 hours a week before, to locate and match invoices with work orders, and the clerk is making $15 and hour, that’s a saving of $300 a week.

All communication is contextual to the environment. The contextual part of communication is for the supervisor or manager of the department where the administration problem exists, to see and recognize the great waste of time and money this creates and the frustrations caused to the customers and employees who have to put up with the nonsense daily.

Apart from saving in productivity, the company also reduces the negative morale caused by such a simple but damaging recurrent problem.

This may not bother some low-level clerk who couldn't care less about the company. But with high achievers, it is deadly. Management must recognize that these people will find it very hard to work under such discriminate circumstances when their idea of work is "when it's not quite right, it's wrong", and "if something is wrong, fix it". They will simply leave. That’s how companies often lose their best people.

Simple things can, not only improve communication and cost between corporate departments, but reduce negative morale and keep companies from losing their high achievers./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.
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Tech Support Email Writing Exposed

2011-02-28T15:33:00.000-08:00

Tech Support Email Writing Exposed

by Diane M. Hoffmann
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

We talk a lot about verbal and nonverbal communication, but there is also a written communication that needs to be addressed, especially nowadays with the web technology that has increased our communication by email writing. That's what I cover in this tech support email writing article.

Email writing is great, speedy, easy and concise. However I have been noticing in personal, business and technical email writing and on internet forums the way that people write emails. Sometimes it is even appalling. There is room to improve email writing.

Too many do not bother to check their email writing before sending out their email communication. The worst offenders are sales or business and technical emails that are full of errors. More and more, we see this sloppiness in the correspondence of tech support groups who are front end customer service representatives!

Ok, small occasional typos are understandable. We all make them. But unfortunately they are too common in the virtual platform of tech support and email writing. Big typos, one after another, along the whole string of e-conversations can be very unpleasant to say the least, and do not express a demonstration of customer appreciation nor professionalism.

Imagine standing in a real time face-to-face discussion and the person you're conversing with stumbles at every other word, stringing together a couple of words at regular intervals, skipping pronouns and endings, and leaving off whole consonants and prepositions...... and you had to put up with several of these communicators in your place of business within the inter-personal activities of management, customers and suppliers day after day. Imagine a salesperson dropping in on you this way.

How would that feel? What would it say about those people you’re communicating with? Well, this happens all the time in the virtual office under tech support and email writing! And it covers all spectra of email writings and correspondence. It is especially hard to take in Customer Service.

In the last while, I began to record a whole number of these e-communications email writing while working with several technical support groups at various e-service establishments. These are million-dollar outfits. And I'm one of their *treasured* customers.

For example, on one on-going dialogue, after several email exchanges, the tech support person 'suddenly' realized that I 'was an affiliate' and therefore had been giving me the wrong information all along -- but I had told him clearly right at the beginning of our email writing that I *was* an affiliate.

On top of this, there were bad spelling and grammar items in all of our lengthy correspondence. OK, I understand that support people are busy and don’t have a lot of time. However aren’t we all? Isn’t this part of doing business? And is there any place in business where we are excused from being businesslike and professional – especially, again, in customer service?

It truly only takes a minute to read over the email before hitting the send button. But, wow, the clean-up that that minute will do. As some experts have said, poor spelling and grammar show a lack of attention and sends the wrong message about the company’s reputation. The badly formed sentences can even give a completely wrong message that can irritate, frustrate and even totally lose a customer.

In another instance I recorded two totally different and opposite answers in email writings, to the same question that came from two tech support people from the same tech support department.

And to write correctly, one has to also read emails correctly. I remember one tech support person who totally lost the issue at hand, after several emails, and apologized profusely to the customer for "misreading" her email when, in fact, he hadn't! Why? Because he had not taken the time to properly read the emails that had been written./dmh

Article copyright(c)2009-2011, Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://buildinternetbusiness.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training".

P.S.:

I have put a lot of my observations in an 11-page "Special Report" which includes samples of actual email communication that took place and my “3 Steps to Better Email Writing” at this link.

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Three Things You Can Do to Jeopardize Your Chance of Success

2011-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

Three Things You Can Do to Jeopardize Your Chance of Success

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

There are a lot of offers in way of "steps" or "things" we can do to achieve certain promises, like "5 things you can do to increase your sales", or, "7 Steps to a better sales letter", but doing them doesn't mean we will get rid of our bad habits.

You may be following these steps, however, if you are holding on to "not doing" the things that can lead to achieving success, then you are sabotaging your efforts.

For example, here are three things you can do to "jeopardize" your chance of success:

1) Not taking massive enough action on your ideas.

2) Not putting into action what you read or learn.

3) Not experiencing enough failures.

Let us examine each one of these.

1) Not taking massive enough action on your ideas:

So many advertising campaigns have not been successful because of not having taken massive enough action. Example, you send out 100 flyers and expect to receive results. But in direct marketing, the average response is from.001 to 10%, depending on how popular the product or service you offer is or how great or low the demand. And, believe me I have seen some campaigns bringing in.001% results in certain industry sectors.

That's when you know what people think of a particular product or service. That's why you do tests, to find out what the consumer wants or doesn't want. If you have a service that not many people are interested in, such as anything that requires a lot of work for example, or anything that is not pleasant to do, your expected response will be at the lower end.

On the other hand if you have a product or service that is in great demand, your result will be higher on the scale. And if you have an offer that is irresistible -- like free beer for instance:) -- you'll be at the very high end.

So let's look at the math:

As you can see, the 100 flyers we talked about earlier will yield 0 response if only 0.001% of the market wants it, but will bring in 10 if the response rate for that product is 10%.

So with a product that has shown to bring in a 10% response, if you want to get 100 responses, you will have to send out 1,000 and not 100 flyers. You see, some people will send out 100 flyers and wait for the response, then send another 100 flyers and wait, etc... While all along, they should send 1,000 at once. And if you want 1,000 response, you will have to send out 10,000 flyers.

In the Internet business, with PPC (Pay-per-click) for instance, it's basically the same thing. Your offerings fall into one of the above categories of percent response (some could be higher than 10% too).

So you have to do your research ahead of time to find out what people are looking for. There's no sense doing a campaign on something that only 0.001% of the market wants - unless of course the sales gain of the product is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. In other words if you reach a large amount but only 1 responds but the sales is $100,000, well then a 0.001% is ok -- providing it didn't cost you a lot of money to promote it.

Along the same line there's no sense doing a campaign for one or two days. You have to keep it there for one or two weeks in order to see results of your tests.

The same thing applies with working, for a different example. If you start a business and only put in 2 hours a day, you'll get very low results. But if you put in 10 hours a day - you'll get vastly different results. Another example is tinting a gallon of paint. If you only put a drop of blue color pigment into the white base, it won't turn blue, but if you put in the whole tube, it will do what you expect.

That's taking the massive enough action. The point is if you only take trickling actions, you will only get trickling results.

2) Not putting into action what you read or learn:

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you read a book on how to start a business and you don't put into action the instructions or advice given, well, nothing will happen -- you won't start the business. It's as simple as that. If you read about how to set-up a web site and don't put what you read about into action, you still won't have a web site next week. If you read about improving communication but don't do what it says, you'll still have the same communication problems.

3) Not experiencing enough failures:

This one is simply that you have to make mistakes, you have to fail in order to get the odds required to succeed. If you try something and fail, then try and try again until you succeed, then you'll have a good success rate. Who does not know the failures of many a successful company or individual that kept at it until it got it. I can think of Hershey, Woolworth, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Thomas Edison, etc., etc., all of them failed in different areas and at different times while achieving successes. The best of athletes, sports figures, golfers fail a lot to be the best at what they do.

In other words we will all fail at many things before we get it right. So the idea is don't be afraid to start something because of the possibility of failure. Success comes out of failures. And it doesn't mean you will fail on a grand scale, you might fail at certain areas of life or business along your journey to success. That's when you make the corrections for the changes that will lead to a better outcome./dmh

Article copyright(c)2009-2011, Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://buildinternetbusiness.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training".
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Advertising, Sales and Marketing, ONline Or OFFline - Are They the Same Thing?

2011-02-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

Advertising, Sales and Marketing, ONline Or OFFline - Are They the Same Thing?

by Diane M. Hoffmann

Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

For years I've been advocating that "sales and marketing" are not the same. Recently I came across an article somewhere on the Internet about "advertising and marketing" not being the same. And a new light went on...

I now write about "advertising, sales and marketing" not being the same. Why is this topic important? Because success in business is all about focus. And to focus, we have to understand business terms and divisional activities of business.

In one of my books that deals with the six significant divisions of an organization, I wrote that sales and marketing are not the same. "Sales" is the direct activity of selling -- telephone cold callings, face-to-face presentations, talking to people, point-of-sales merchandising... ONline, it is the link that leads to the payment provider. In other words the actual selling!

Marketing is the activity of studying and researching the product/service markets, the competition (what do they do right and wrong), the demographics, the prospective target market of your business and products, etc., and crunching these results into the tools that will lead to the sales and that will effect the sales.

Now, is advertising and marketing the same? No more than sales and marketing. Advertising is one of the tools that leads to the sales. The tools of advertising are the media used such as direct marketing, newspaper and magazine ads, radio and TV, etc. In ONline business it is the Internet, PPC Adwords, e-zine and article writing, e-mail building and distribution, etc.

Are businesses wasting money advertising? Only if they haven't done the marketing first. Because how are you going to know who you are advertising to, or where, without having done the research? If you don't know your target market and you just put an ad in the paper or on radio, you are throwing one message to a large audience that is not even looking for your product - usually 90%. The equivalent in Internet terms is "know your niche" and target your message specifically to it.

For example in OFFline business if you do a direct mail, it's better to do 100 mailouts in a specific postal area that you can, or your sales team, follow-up within a week, rather than to send out 1,000 or 10,000 anywhere that you cannot follow-up. Because the sales are always in the follow-ups!

In ONline business, you target specific niche -- people who are looking for x information or z product, etc. then you advertise or promote within that specific target, i.e. keyword-specific for PPC, for instance, and/or keyword-specific web sites and web-pages.

So, not only are the subject words of this article not the same, but they should be used in this order: Marketing, Advertising and Sales, each building up in their own essential ways to the goal of the business which is to sell what it's in business to provide to customers. Remember no Sales, no Business! /dmh

Article copyright(c)2009-2011, Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://buildinternetbusiness.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training".
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Internet Manager: Lead Thyself

2011-02-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Internet Manager: Lead Thyself

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

If I want to show myself a man (a woman) able to lead my business, I have to "take" the lead. And that means, no matter how busy I might be with "other things", I still have to feed my web sites, if I'm serious about building an Internet business.

Purposefully, I have spent the last several days totally focused on bringing my web sites up-to-date. And to my surprise, I have found them to be wanting of attention on my part.

Serendipitously, in the same time frame, I came across this quote, "Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself." -- (Thomas J. Watson Sr, President of IBM from 1952 to 1971)(Wikipedia)

So my thought was not a pleasant one at first, but let me explain.

Ok, I had good reasons. I had spent the last months and indeed years totally involved in medium and long-term projects that kept me away from my own web sites every day of my business weeks.

So, having had an e-awakening, I am now getting back on track -- which is something I want to talk about today...

Success in the Internet business is all about keeping on top of your web sites. If you don't keep them active, the search engines will eventually ignore them. And your visitors as well.

Without traffic your web sites are dead. You need to keep the content of your sites dynamic. In other words you need to keep them moving with activities, new content pages, new information, new offerings, new tools that offer solutions to your visitors, new ideas, etc., always bringing your pages up a notch.

What I found in my current re-uptake of my efforts is how much I had neglected my Internet work, even though I did do minimum maintenance. I had been "too busy" with local business to spend more necessary time. Yet I love my Internet business, but I realize I need to double and triple my attention.

Let this self-directed rant be a strong word of encouragement to all you out in cyber space, that, just as dynamic as the Internet is, your Internet business requires good daily (or at the very least weekly) doses of attention.

What I discovered also is that every time I read through my web site pages, I find something that needs to be fixed or adjusted. That alone is a full time job. And then, if you want to be successful at the ONline business game you need constant vigilance at increasing your traffic. That also is a full time job. And then there's the tweaking of your sales pages to improve the sales-to-visit ratios when your visitors do get to click on them, new content, blog maintenance, etc., etc.

The point of all this is: Never mind leading others... be a leader within your own personal life and business. Lead your very own self first. Then, leading others will come naturally. /dmh

Article copyright(c)2009-2011, Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.
Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://buildinternetbusiness.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training".
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Energy, Persistence And Proper Focus Conquer All Things

2011-02-28T11:56:00.000-08:00

Energy, Persistence And Proper Focus Conquer All Things

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d.

Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

An old quote by a well known printer and statesman has become a new perspective on the basis of my own writing and working.

"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." - Benjamin Franklin

How interesting that Mr. Franklin would say this. He ought to know...

Benjamin Franklin is famous for being a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a printer, a philosopher, a musician and an economist. Today, Ben Franklin is honored as one of our Founding Fathers and as one of America's greatest citizens. His ideas are still alive in our world today.

Known as being a complex man, Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 but his home was the city of Philadelphia which also became his gravesite in 1790.

He is also the man who wrote "Energy and persistence conquer all things".

His quotes are to be taken seriously. However when I read this one on energy and persistence, being the philosopher that I am, I immediately gave it my "OMQPO" (One-minute Quick Pondering Overview© ) and realized that this isn't complete.

Yes, energy and persistence is indeed critically necessary in anyone who wants to be successful in life, but there is a lot more to it. One can be energetic and persistent but not be successful. I know a lot of people who are energetic and persistent...

But they focus on nothing important or lasting, or they focus on too many things - which reminds me of the old saying "Jack of all trades, master of none". Now this one is no longer true at all. Amazing how times change. This one should now be, "Jack of all trades, master of each one of them". Why? Because of all the downsizing...

The average working individual today has up to five careers in his/her lifetime. You acquire a lot of trades (skills) during that time. Each career has a whole gamut of transferable skills and today you have to master every one of them if you want to keep your jobs or stay in business.

Going back to energy and persistence, as I said earlier, there are many people focusing on the wrong things. So the saying of Benjamin Franklin now should be "Energy, persistence and focus conquer all things".

No, wait a minute, you could be on the wrong or bad focus. The saying should be "Energy, persistence and proper focus conquer all things".

Now I can just hear some of you say but what does 'proper' mean? It may mean something to one person and something else to another. Yes, but I mean, what does it really mean. It can only mean what it means. The dictionaries say the word 'proper' means "correct, just, according to usage, as a proper expression, a proper use of a word, etc..."

If the focus is wrong or bad it would be destructive. So you say, "but what is wrong or bad, it can be different things to different people". Well, again, it only means what it means. Bad and wrong is the opposite of good and right.

And my quickest description of it right now is this scripture that comes to my mind:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any vitue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." (Philippians 4:8).

So indeed, my conclusion of this observation is that Benjamin Franklin's quote today should be "Energy, persistence and proper focus conquer all things". /dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://buildinternetbusiness.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training".

The Effect of the Changed Role and Elimination of Secretaries in Corporate Human Resources

2011-02-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d/th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Effect of the Changed Role and Elimination of Secretaries in Corporate Human Resources

A lot has happened in the last couple of decades in corporate human resources. For one thing Secretaries have become Administrative Assistants. Women don’t like to be called secretaries anymore. But, unfortunately, this has left a big gap between the role and skills of a secretary vs the role and skills of the higher level – or what used to be a higher level – position of administrative assistant.

This has particularly been a major shift for the male corporate business executive, in the human resources understanding.

I remember an amusing instance around this time of change when I was in Toronto. I picked up my mail at my shared office. While I was pulling out the items from my folders, a man who also used the same business service centre as I, came to pick up his mail.

As he approached the cabinet where both our company mail was inserted for pick up, he said to me "Are we still doing the mail?", assuming I was one of the office secretaries placing the mail into the clients folders -- and I was then some fifty years old! If I had been a man, this comment would have never entered his mind, he would have spoken to him as a colleague instead.

However, there is nothing wrong with a secretarial position, or being a secretary. It takes special skills and training and interest to be a secretary, and not all women have that capability by any means. May be most (an 80/20 formula), but not all. The role and skills of secretaries are still needed, no doubt about that, and those that like it should do it. Ironically though, now administrative assistants are doing the secretarial work anyway.

One area where secretaries are especially needed is in the administration division. This is where the paperwork is done, the clerical, the filing; this is where the office operations, routines, etc. are established, the reception function is coordinated and managed, the customer service is handled, etc. A lot of secretarial work is processed here.

In the corporate reshuffling of the technological era, many companies have eliminated secretaries completely. Now, a lot of the secretarial work that needs to be done isn't done. Some companies who had the insight that secretaries were still needed, kept at least one such position opened per department, whose service all managers within the department can use.

If you were not given that luxury, as a manager, here's what you should at least do, for administration and organization's sake:

You should set up a desk in your department as if a secretary was available to you. This will allow you and your department colleagues to place such clerical things as mail going out, labels to be glued, envelopes to be typed, filing to be done, etc., in specified trays. Then all of you can take turns to getting back to these necessary tasks at the end of the day, or first thing in the morning, to sit down and complete.

This will get these secretarial items out of the way of prime time issues that have direct critical impact on bottom lines. When things pile up too much, a temporary secretary can be brought in for a couple of days. This creative thinking eliminates the accumulation of clerical papers on managers' desks that interfere with real-time issue-oriented activities.

There is a ratio of clerical to management activities that affect the cost of salary grades. In other words, clerical and secretarial salaries are below supervisors and managers salary levels. Therefore if you hire a manager, and fifty percent of his or her time is spent doing clerical work, the critical productivity and bottom line figures are greatly affected. A close analysis might even uncover this to the extent of being false economy./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

The Changed Old-Young, Male-Female Human Resources of Reshuffled Corporate Jobs.

2011-02-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Changed Old-Young, Male-Female Human Resources of Reshuffled Corporate Jobs.

Back in the eighties, many companies began to try to get older workers to do younger people's work. This was caused by the fact that more baby boomers were going after managerial jobs then there were jobs available at that level.

But, a 39-year old doesn't want to do a 19-year-old's job. He/she considers, and rightfully so, him/herself to be beyond that. And a 49-year-old certainly doesn't want to do a 29-year-old's job. The result started the process to an increasingly frustrated workforce.

Companies that hire people promising to move them to higher levels must move them fast and make genuine efforts to accommodate their level of thinking and working until they are moved. They must give them some authority and power to do what they can do. In other words treat them at their level and not as inexperienced novices. Otherwise they will lose them.

Management and executive-level professionals cannot be treated like entry-level workers, even if they are doing jobs below their skills and experiences. As I have read somewhere, "Once expanded to larger ideas, the mind cannot return to its original size", it's as simple as that.

Because many companies don't recognize this fact, these people eventually find themselves forced to go out and start their own business. Well, that might be a good thing because, otherwise they might not have gone out and become the statistics of the 90% of the entrepreneurial businesses that collectively create jobs and hire the majority of the national work force.

However, there is also the statistics that many small business start-ups don’t make it beyond their first two to five years. Many would rather work as intrapreneurs within a company then as entrepreneurs on their own. The problem is that many of those that have gone out of an unsatisfying job position, did so, not necessarily because they wanted to, but because their mental acumen was not being used; this was the only way they could be allowed to operate at their level.

As well, since companies have had to flatten their corporate structures, many lower level jobs were chucked out the window. This created another reshuffling of traditional human resources. Secretarial positions were eliminated and, combining secretarial and middle management positions gave birth to today’s common job titles of Administrative Assistant or Coordinator of some project or other function. And this, over time, created the new, often ill-disposed and untrained, level of bottom management.

Now, many managers have to do their own secretarial work -- especially women managers. In a lot of cases, male managers use women managers to do secretarial functions -- except where they are met by women who can speak their minds.

It is unfortunate but for some reason, women are automatically expected to do all the clerical work that surrounds a position. Read the ads in the newspaper. Many of them are obviously addressed to women because of their list of clerical duties. Yet, the ads seek to fill managerial positions. A man reading “Executive Director” or "Project Coordinator" will turn away as soon as he gets to such words as "assist in", "word processing", "telephone answering", etc.

Fortunately, the technological age has changed that somewhat. Now, everybody has to "type" his/her own correspondence on computerized word processors. That was one way to get men to do typing jobs. However, there are many companies who still seek to hire women simply because men will not do certain jobs, within combined job positions, that are of secretarial nature.

For example men will never be expected to fill in at reception desks, answer a colleague’s phones while he’s away, make photocopies, send faxes, bring coffees in. Have you ever seen a guy walking in to the manager’s office to bring a customer or visitor coffee? Why not?

But female managers and high level senior secretaries are still asked and expected to do this as part of their jobs. That's OK if that's what you applied for. We don't ask men to do this sort of work though. Managers will look for a woman, no matter at what level of jobs she is, to carry out these tasks, never thinking of seeking a man to do the same things./dmh

Home Office Planning - Three Things to Consider First When Planning Your Home Office.

2011-02-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d/th, i.s.r.p.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

Home Office Planning - Three Things to Consider First When Planning Your Home Office.

As a certified International Staging and Re-design Professional click here for info I'd like to help you with this article I put together to ease the task of planning or re-doing your home office.

So you decided to set up an office at home. Or you've had a home office for some time but you realize that a makeover is due now.

Where do you begin?

Well, first, consider what part of the house you will set up your office in. Personally, and many other practical self-employed entrepreneur, I use the living room for an office.

The reason is because it is the first room you come into from the entrance. This makes it more business and professional for your visitors (and your friends and family who often don't take you seriously if you work from home).

It is also good for you as you come and go in your business activities to enter into your office as you open the front door. It gives you the feeling of real office and lets you take care of the business matters right away as you make your way to your domestic area of the house.

And using the living room also eliminates going through the personal belongings of a house, or the children's toys and activities, etc., in order to get to the office area.

If you cannot use the living room for whatever reason, or if you don't need to use it because you will not have business visitors, then you can look for the most practical place that you have for your purpose.

Wherever you chose to set up your home office, there are three things you need to consider first when planning a home office area:

1. Functionality.
2. Efficiency.
3. Convenience.

As you look at what area you should use, put these three items in you thought.

Some questions to ask yourself:

What tasks will I be performing.
Will I be drawing, computing, drafting, building, sewing, telephoning, etc.

What will help me accomplish the tasks I'll be doing?
Will I need a drafting table, a computer, work tables, printers, etc.

When will I be working?
During the day, at night, both (I often get up at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night and come down to my office and work till 7 or 8 am, then have breakfast and go back to work. For this, I need to have good lighting over my computer and desk area. So you need overall lighting as well as lighting over the work area.

For during the day, make best use of your natural light by placing your most important work area near the window. But consider your equipment so that you don't end up for example with the light glaring on to your computer screen.

Are there enough electrical outlets for all the operating equipment?
Consider the placement of your equipment to make the electrical connection as easy as possible.

For example, I always make sure to place my desk in such a way so that I can get to the back of my computer. I have found over the years this to be an issue whenever I've had to upgrade or fix computer equipment. You need to be able to get to the back panels or electrical power cords which usually accommodate other lighting and telephony equipment, printers etc.

And make sure you don't over power any electrical outlet. Spread it around and make sure it's not all on the same circuit breaker. Your home office area may require additional outlets which is a safer bet than to many extension cords.

Who else must be accommodated in the room?
Will there be someone else working with me? Will I be seeing salespeople, customers, prospects? Will I have a bookkeeper coming in part-time? Think of all these things because you will have to set-up an area either within the room or just outside close by.

Does the space suit your habits or personality?
Do you privacy or do you prefer to be accessible to your family? Are you more at easy with a casual environment or do you feel better in a more formal surrounding.

Once you've outlined your preferred requirements, make your home office a pleasant workplace.

Chose a decorating style from country and traditional to contemporary. Your choice of furniture and accessories will highlight these styles.

You can have a mix of casual and formal by placing one major furniture as a focus point that carries the primary style. For example, a large antique breakfront for your books, with a contemporary desk and a traditional looking chair, would make a statement of personal formality and professionalism.

Select furnishings and details you enjoy. Include some history. Set out some family photos, award items, travel souvenirs that will show up your personality.

Mix texture to soften the look. Use fabric-covered panels behind a laminate desk to absorb outside noises. Leave windows clear of curtains and drapes in order to let as much light as possible in.

Use clean, bright and light paint and colors to give maximum lighting and space. Bring your preferred accent colors in your furniture and accessories.

Allow room for expansion. You may have to add storage, working space etc. Make sure the place you pick has some area within or adjacent for this.

And last but not least, consider your personal influence within that home office environment. Your personal presentation. Dress for success.

I always cringe when I hear those who try to entice you to get into Internet business because you can "work in your pyjamas". Right, give me a break. Business is serious business. You could lose your shirt if you're not in the proper frame of mind at any time. Success requires self-discipline.

Even if you are at home, dress for business. You never know when someone might call on you to do business. Always be ready. It is a fact that when we are appropriately dressed we feel better, talk better and work better. It affects the whole psychy. and it is a good habit for yourself and a good example for others who follow.

The Importance Of Planning Product Cost And Pricing Right From The Start.

2011-02-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Importance Of Planning Product Cost And Pricing Right From The Start.

Too many small companies don't plan the costing of their products or services ahead of time with a wide area understanding of the now and future activities of a product. In other words a product needs to be priced as well as costed before you start selling it.

I had a phone call from a customer once, who ran into a new problem as his business of highly technical machinery products expanded into a "dealership" requirement. He had sold directly to the end user since he had started his company some five or six years earlier. He had kept his company small and slow-growing, running it by himself and keeping his products on a highly customized basis.

Now, with ads in global manufacturers directories, he was getting prospects from around the world wanting to buy his machines to resell to their customers. These new prospective dealers needed to make money on their deals and asked him to quote to the end-user directly with a higher figure than he had been quoting them.

This didn't make sense to him and brought in a whole new series of difficulties and questions, both in costing and pricing, and that's what prompted his call to me.

Another example is a music club who came out with a collection of songs and instrumental renderings from the members on a sample CD which they sold as one of the fundraising projects. They announced to the members that they could buy the CD's for a particular price and then sell them to their friends and relatives.

But there was no indication as to what price they could sell the CD's for. Different figures would get thrown around at meetings, but no one knew what that should be and everyone sold them for different prices.

In both cases, there needed to be simple costing and pricing formula put in place before selling. There had to be a retail sale price with 'dealer' (members) discount to follow.

I remember when I had a small manufacturing business at the time when there was a federal manufacturers tax in this country. The moment you registered as a manufacturer, the federal auditors would soon show up into your place of business to make sure you were incorporating this twelve percent levy into your costing.

As long as you could show them that you were using a standard formulae, that you followed consistently in order to come up with your costing/pricing, they were quite happy. This of course was later replaced by our infamous GST.

In the same manner, when pricing an item one must begin by thinking the end-user retail price, working from there backward to the cost of the item. Or else, you work your cost first, including the discounts you will give to your dealers, wholesalers and distributors, and work forward to the retail. Costing is one thing, done at the manufacturing or purchasing point; pricing is another, done after the costing is already taken care of.

For example:

I produce a widget that costs me $10.00 to manufacture (or to buy wholesale). Whether or not I am going to sell that directly to the end-user or not, I should think in terms of selling through dealers now because it is easier to bring the price down than to raise it up later. I can always give a discount to the buyer as an introduction limited-time offer.

If ever the item becomes popular, I may need to sell through dealers -- I may even have to reach them through wholesalers or distributors. And the discount structure I give to a dealer is different from a wholesaler or a distributor.

By entering formula in a spreadsheet that calculates each of the expectant pricing, I get something like the following.

The starting figure is of course my cost. Then I make that times 3 (in this example). I give the dealer 40% discount, the wholesaler 50% and the distributor 60%. They make a profit of the difference between their cost and the retail price for the dealer, the dealer price for the wholesale and the wholesale price for the distributor, respectively.

And I make a profit of the difference between my cost and the retail price if and when I sell retail, my cost and the dealer cost when I sell to the dealer direct, my cost and the wholesaler cost when I sell to the wholesaler, and my cost and the distributor cost when I sell to the distributor. Of course, at the distributor price I make less per unit but they bring in volume.

This last figure of what I make at the distributor price, is the figure that I watch when I do my spreadsheet calculation. If it is below what I must make as a profit to cover my manufacturing costs and operating expenses, then I change the figure I used to multiply it into the retail price -- in this case the 'times 3' used as an example, to times 4 or 5 or whatever the case may be).

If I sell retail for convenience to the end user, I should never sell below the retail price, in order to protect my dealers. The retail price of course is always a "suggested retail" price. Dealers will have to compete with one another and therefore some will be selling for less. But the suggested retail price the manufacturer comes up with is based on a costing/pricing as shown above -- in its simplest form.

There would be a lot more to discuss in this area of finance but this is just to show the importance and the connection between the role of costing and pricing in establishing the selling price before the products is offered on the market - however small that market may be.

Every business is different and everything is relative to each their sizes from small one-man enterprises to multi-million dollar operations./dmh

The Administration Division of a Business

2011-02-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Administration Division of a Business

Administration. That's a large department. Much inter-departmental activities may be coordinated or funneled through here, such as accounts payable & receivable, information systems, sales and service, credit and collection, office management, executive administration, etc.

You name it, all converges here sooner or later. If there are no payroll or human resource departments, administration takes care of that too.

I remember an individual who joined a company as a graphics designer/DTP producer. During her interview, she agreed to function as receptionist "until the company brought in another person".

The partner-managers had told her about all the needs for rewriting organizational and training materials which included a lot of technical and design activities; being a specialist in her profession with many years of creative design experience, this sounded great. The company made it clear that the reception duties would be treated as a secondary expectation and that the activities would be split up between her and the office manager to whom she was to report.

She was also told that the new production department would be moved from the reception area to behind a partition wall, from which location she could answer the phones, but a support level individual would be placed at the reception area to take care of the visitors and numerous interruptions.

As the weeks turned into months, none of the promises took place. She communicated about it in various ways and then in writing. Even at her high professional level she reported to an office administrator who was really the president's executive secretary and administrative assistant rolled into one. Often, situations arose where the decision from top management was required, but the limited knowledge of the administrator curtailed effective technical graphics production and corporate decisions.

The president of the company did not make it his business to learn about the technical job function, fatally perceiving it as a "typing" or "secretarial" job and left the situation to deteriorate until the company lost a valuable, high achiever Gold Collar worker./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Executive: A New Management Level Created.

2011-02-10T16:51:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

Executive: A New Management Level Created.

The doing away with surplus secretaries and clerical people in the last years has created a new management level.

We've had Top Management and Middle Management for decades. Now for the first time, in the nineties, has appeared a new brand of management: Bottom Management.

Now, everyone is a manager but not everyone is treated like a manager. Not many of the old management people are ready to deal with this -- they haven't been prepared!

Neither are all those at "bottom management" level ready to take on that new role either. It is not right to consider them to be "managers" without proper training. There are still some people who are not ready to be managers at the bottom (by lack of experience or ability), yet they are told and expected to be "accountable".

Being accountable for your responsibility at your level to your manager at the higher level is fine but being accountable for your managers' responsibilities is not appropriate.

Then "teamwork" came into the picture which did away with "bosses". Then "leadership" was added to the business vernacular, and everybody was expected to be a leader.

But what is a leader? Who is a leader? Too many chiefs not enough followers, that's what we now have in many companies. And in others it's too many followers, not enough leaders.

However, communication still begins at the top.

In "Dear Boss, What Every Manager Needs to Hear and Every Employee Wants to Say, by Dr. William B. Werther, Jr." of the School of Business Administration, University of Miami, it says, "Leaders create a vision around which people rally; managers marshall the resources to achieve this vision. Both are worthy and much-needed roles. And at times managers need to be leaders and vice versa. But bosses are people who lack vision and give orders to cover up their limitations."

Effective executives and managers should all be leaders not bosses. But to be effective leaders, they first must be effective communicators. /dmh

The Finance Division -- Figures Don't Lie, Two Plus Two Equal Four.

2011-02-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Finance Division -- Figures Don't Lie, Two Plus Two Equal Four.

When it comes to the financial area of a business, figures don't lie! In other words, half of the communication problems are eliminated by the simple fact that people are working with figures in finance and accounting departments. Two plus two equal four. You can't misinterpret that! Well, may be verbally, but not on paper.

Just yesterday, I was talking to a "hyper" person on the phone. She talked fast, going from one issue to the other all in the same sentence. She gave me a fax number where to send some information. She gave it all in one breath without pause and continued on with another subject.

I had to ask her to slow down to give me a chance to write down the number, repeating the area code, then the next three digits, which she acknowledged to be correct, then I repeated half of the next four digits, pausing for her to give me the last two, which she did and which I repeated as I had heard it.

When I faxed the information, the fax did not go through. I called her again and it turned out I had the last two digits as 25 instead of 35. But, when I repeated "25"to her which I had written down, she said, "right". So figures can be misinterpreted verbally.

But not the figures that are calculated by adding machines and computers. Like I said two plus two equal four, not five. So the communication problem is non-existent in financial figures. One can manipulate them but that’s done by humans, not calculating machines.

One of the biggest problems in small business is proper financial and business planning. In larger organizations, this is a normal part of the operation; usually companies have hired people who include this area of the business as part of their job. Because of the nature of the corporate beast, the financial institutions expect and demand this obligational necessity.

When I teach starting a small business, I'm always amazed at the amount of people who "dream" of starting a business but don't give any thought to putting a business financial plan together. Then, half the class quits within the first few weeks as they see what they hadn’t thought about. They are disappointed at the need to start a business.

Only the serious ones stay on and appreciate what they learn through the exercise. Even if their dream may have to be delayed, they now have concrete figures to work on. They are the effective communicators of tomorrow. They are the ones who will succeed because of their continuous personal improvement, growth and self-discipline.

Once you have the financial figures on a projection, you can manipulate these numbers to fit your goals. If a hundred thousand dollars isn’t enough to start the type of business you’re thinking of, then you will have to figure out how to raise the money or cut back expenses.

In an existing business or corporation, the figures that spew out of the accounting software are telling you exactly where you’re at. Monitoring daily, weekly, monthly will give you the tool to take immediate action to change the totals of top and bottom lines and all the figures in-between./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

The Production Division -- Simple Improvement Between Plant And Office.

2011-02-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d./th.
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

The Production Division -- Simple Improvement Between Plant And Office.

The previous era of TQM and Re-engineering training has served too well to bring out the types of situations found in plants across our nations.

Stories have been examined under the microscopes of magazine, television and newspaper media. Again and again, the final analysis of first-time exploratory consultant meetings has shown that lack of organization is the company's worst own enemy.

Disorganization provides bad communication between plant manager and top management, floor supervisor and plant manager, plant workers and supervisors, office workers and peers and departments at all levels. Often, the remedy is a simple regular staff meeting on Monday mornings! But many managers fail to provide this.

The key is to sit down together and talk about the problems -- or the challenges. But that is sitting down with a goal in mind, a planned agenda and an organized leadership. The question "Why is there so much material waste?" requires listening to those who work with the material: "Here, come with me and I'll show you". Then go and listen. Then brainstorm together.

I remember doing some work for the president of a small company. My job was in the operations and I was involved in all facets of the manufacturing as well as marketing. The company had never had an inventory system even with the 300+ parts needed to manufacture each of the company's products.

The top engineer and myself realized we had to put one in place. Parts were all over the place, nobody knew how many there were left in stock or needed to be purchased in order to start a new manual production line. Everything had to be re-counted each time a product process began.

There was no way to identify suppliers of certain items and compare prices when needed. Back-orders were supposed to be "in the heads of the staff" ready for whenever substitutes or emergencies occurred. Why?

The company had grown from a one-man operation to several people. But, the owner had not grown with it. We wanted to set a system in place, but he was dead against it! Communication is a two-way street. It works both ways in any division of the company. If only one side communicates, it’s pretty hard to make it work – especially if it is the top management.

The trouble is that too often top management does not want to train and grow. As a result, good people are lost. Especially in a small company where each staff member wears many hats – one can be plant manager and office manager; another is marketing and accounting; another is executive and productions, etc.

In a larger corporation, the fact that there is more organization and specific divisions makes communication easier and more effective. People are more professional by reason of the business. There is less difficulties dealing with one head of a department like the plant, or the office, or the accounting. Each stands in his/her specialty and functionality.

But even in a small company where people wear many hats, there has to be department organization and the understanding of it, in order to sustain the flow of communication between top management (usually an owner/manager) and the staff./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Talent Recognition -- The Enemy Is Us

2011-02-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communication

Talent Recognition -- The Enemy Is Us

With all the talk about the shortage of talented people in our corporations today, why are we not recognizing those already in our midst? According to experts in the field of hiring, training and development, there is great potential within our very own companies. It just needs talent recognition.

The difficult part, as I have seen many times before, is the lack of ability to identify latent talent already among our employees who aren't usually responsible for management duties yet.

That's the problem in the majority of business establishments - we just don't recognize who we have. Why? Because we simply don't make it a point to get to know our people. And getting to know our people is not hard to do -- just talk to them!

But we don't. We don't stop and ask questions. We pass by their office pods or brush by them in the hallways, hastily saying "Good morning" but not stopping. What happened to the old MBWA (Managing By Walking Around)? We may even add "How's it going?" but we rush on because we really don't want to get into that.

In the cafeteria, we make sure the conversations stay on light pleasantries (or we don’t even set foot in that area at all either); and at the company picnic or Christmas party, we stroll around without initiating any serious get-to-know conversation, taking advantage of the occasion. We say we need social activities in order to provide opportunities to know one another better but when we have them, we still don’t communicate with purpose.

Some companies who have awakened (sort-of) to this common corporate shortcoming, implemented "Talent Development Programs". But that is going about it in the wrong way. Why do we always think that everybody needs to be "developed".

What we really need are "Talent Recognition Programs". We need to train ourselves (the enemy is us) to take the time to recognize whom we have among those currently involved in those positions not responsible yet for management duties. We need to recognize them and move them up the ladder.

In the downsizing and cut backs of the last couple of decade, scores of qualified, skilled individuals have had to take on jobs many levels below their business capabilities and experiences. Many of them have operated their own enterprises where they managed every aspect of business from executive to finance, sales, production, service, administration, personnel, etc. Every operational aspect, even if it was smaller than the present organization, was managed. Others have been downsized out of corporate management jobs that could not be replaced because of the bad economic times.

Once we see the light, what can we do? As top management -- including the president -- first we have to dig up their resumes again from the interviewer’s forgotten files and look ourselves for the golden nuggets of talent recognition. Let's not leave these highly personal informational papers to die in the aftermath of the limited, tunnel-vision, H.R. or department supervisors' initial examination.

Then, let's read them ourselves, paying attention to the between-the-line cues and clues and let's talk to them. Really talk - asking the right questions from an intrapreneur to an entrepreneur. Forget about canned theories and letters. Then test with projects that the individual can work on in a short period of time - say a week, a month or three months. All with proper delegating and regular meetings. Then assess for talent recognition./dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

Challenge Or Problem - Which is It?

2011-02-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

by Diane M. Hoffmann
Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications

Challenge Or Problem - Which is It?

In business, over the years, I have seen many common words and phrases become adapted to management for specific or altogether new meanings. Challenge and problem are two of them.

Anxious to rouse up their teams to motivation, leaders have brought their creative language, picked up from business academia, to rallies and conferences. Accountable is another word that turned out, in my opinion, to be more of a cop out for managers than an inspiration for staff members.

Remembering well in the late eighties, early nineties when I was working in a top global company, I have seen more times than I want to think about, situations when managers have used this new word application to get out of their responsibility to their own team. "You're accountable for your actions now, therefore I'm not responsible for your poor performance". Of course, if the performance is grand, they immediately take the credit!

Well, another twist of common sense has crept up in challenge vs problem. In about the same era, leaders introduced to the workforce the replacement of problem for challenge. They didn't want business folks to call a problem a "problem" anymore, they wanted them -- actually insisted they refer to it as a "challenge". If you did call it what it really was, you were swiftly corrected.

However, is an expedition to climb Mount Everest a problem or a challenge? Is entering a yacht race a problem or a challenge? Is taking on a political opponent a problem or a challenge? Is a computer breakdown a problem or a challenge? Is the loss of fifty percent sales a problem or a challenge? Is a leader who will bring down the house a problem or a challenge?

The first three questions are clearly not problems. They are definite challenges that one wants to dare. The other three questions are problems that have manifested themselves and that will require a solution, a process of resolve. That solution process is what will (or should) become a challenge to take on.

Why don't we call it what it is? And why is this important? Again, as I always say, because focus in business is important. A problem is a problem. A challenge is a challenge. They represent two different feats, they require two different approaches.

Dictionaries define problem as: a question or a difficulty needing a solution. A question proposed for solution, decision, or determination; a subject given for examination or proof; any question involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty. Etc.

Challenge is defined as: a call to fight, a call to account, a dispute, a claim. An invitation or summons, verbal or written, to decide a controversy. An invitation to a contest of any kind; as, a challenge to a public debate. Etc.

A challenge can be a problem in itself sometimes. A problem cannot be a challenge - the action to solve that problem is what becomes the challenge.

So next time a staff member comes to us saying "We have a problem" or "There's a problem in the graphics department", let's not "correct" them but let's hear them out and work with them to solve a real problem. /dmh

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of this web site http://business-resources-hrc.blogspot.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training". Copyright(c)2009-2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio.

In Search of Integrity and Authenticity in the Internet Business -- Email Refund Requests

2010-02-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

For a couple of months now, I have been trying to get my money back on a marketing system I tried out for my business.

Unfortunately within a few days, I realized the system was way too big for my needs and sent an email to inform the provider of that. I had originally heard from these people on a teleseminar and when they called me following an email for information I had sent, I asked if it should happen that I do not find it suitable for my need would I be able to cancel and get my money back, and I was told yes.

I have written from the first contact person, moving up to a customer service and then one of the partners and now would like to email the president but he does not list his email address.

Now with my last 2 emails that I have sent I am no longer getting a "receipt" confirmation and have to assume they have put my email in a spam filter.

So, I thought I would try to get to his desk through social media and this web site page post and my Google blog.

For the rest of the story

Happy and Prosperous New Year!

2010-01-02T04:25:00.000-08:00

Well, the Old Year ended and the New Year began! I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Have you read my "Year in Review" article yet?
Go here

Then come back and leave your comment about your old year and new year's resolutions.

You Should Get What You Signed Up For!

2009-10-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

Having been on the Internet for a few years (since the late 90's), I have noticed a difference in many of the ways that newsletters and offers are being delivered to Internet clients.

For instance, new product offers used to be in a simple format. You received an email from someone you had signed up with and there was a presentation about the new product or service and then a link to go read more about it.

Now, many marketers have a further step after you click on the email link. You have to enter your name and email address. Unless I know about it or really need it badly, I simply click off. I have no time to be filling out submission forms for all the emails I receive every day.

Speaking of "all the email I receive every day", another thing that irks me is when you've subscribed to a newsletter and you end up getting 2, 3, 4 a week with one item on each one. I know, it's all about numbers. You send off a mailing to X number and you get X sales as a results. So the more you do it, the more you make sales. But that's crazy from the point of view of the receiver. It only leads to deletes and unsuscriptions.

I think if you sign up, you should get what you signed up for -- a weekly or monthly or occasional email. Anything else is abuse! In my view anyway.

That's all for now,
Have a g-r-e-a-t day,
Dr.Diane