Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Human Resources

Spring Cleaning For Small Business? Yes! In December!

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Whether it’s a year where something we once knew as “normal” was part of our reality, or during an unprecedented and unimaginable year of a global pandemic, the abiding management question for all small business owners is always valid: “What’s the best use of my time right now?” And at no other time of the year are we more time-management challenged than in December.

The twelfth calendar month is the only one where two powerful imperatives converge against a hard stop, each demanding a full measure of your time, attention, and resources:

  1. The perennial push to close out the sales year as strongly as possible, while
  2. Simultaneously taking steps to set the business up for a fast and clean start when the New Year dawns on January 1.

Pardon the football metaphor, but in the marketplace game your business plays all year, December is the two-minute drill of your fourth quarter. And in this tight transition period, that fierce competition for precious time and resources requires discipline and devotion to fundamentals.

Our grandmothers practiced the fundamental of spring cleaning when the weather broke warm. In the marketplace, in order to kick off the New Year right, your spring cleaning should happen before then. There are many targets for a business’s December cleaning, but here are five important ones to get you started. [Continue Reading]

Implications of the Pandemic Workforce Diaspora on Corporate Culture

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“Frankly, I’m amazed at how well we’re working right now. We’ve experienced zero drop in performance.”

That quote, and variations of it, came from several CEOs during the second half of 2020, in response to my question: “How have your teams performed so far during the lockdown?” These CEOs were guests on my weekday, syndicated radio program, “The Small Business Advocate Show.” In fact, they were so pleasantly surprised that one executive even asked rhetorically, “Tell me again why we’re spending $5million a year on office rent?”

For date context, that was the initial period when the marketplace was essentially locked down, and the workforce was sent home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight, millions of workers across the globe started working remotely and, ready or not, subsequent teamwork, collaboration and meetings were conducted in the two-dimensional digital domain, like on a Zoom call.

Based on the answers to my question, it seemed that this emergency, once-in-a-career, global workplace disruption had revealed some previously unknown magical management formula [Continue Reading]

Will your business be successful? Depends on how you answer these HR questions. 

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1. What is your business’ annual training budget?

2. Are your employees successful?

3. Who are your key employees?

Now, let’s compare your answers to what they reveal about the future success of your business.

1. What is your business’ annual training budget? 

While you’re chewing on that, let me point out one of the HR practices that Big Businesses are known for, and which small businesses should emulate: a legendary commitment to training. Alas, too many small firms conduct training after a fashion, if at all, and likely with no budget.

Historically, big businesses have had an advantage in this area because they have the resources to pay for structured training programs, and the staff redundancy to give their people time away from their assignments to acquire training. But thanks to the Internet, and thousands of companies that develop and distribute convenient and affordable online training programs, small businesses can acquire training in a wide range of disciplines without breaking the budget and with a minimum of lost production.

So how’re you coming on that training budget answer? [Continue Reading]

Grow your Leadership Tree with four power questions

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Most agree that there are many traits of an effective leader, including competent, professional, visionary, trustworthy, confident, a communicator and, of course, courageous.

But great leaders are set apart further by three other qualities.

1. Servant-leadership. In the 21st-century marketplace, the prime devotion of great leaders is to their people because they know it’s through engaged, high-functioning teams that their own goals are achieved.

2. Honest curiosity. This quality has two parts that are as inextricable as the sides of a coin: 1) A great leader is devoted to asking questions, and 2) they listen.

3. Mentor mentality. The most successful and beloved leaders I’ve known had a trait that’s often overlooked: They mentored their people to become leaders. Great NFL coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, Tom Landry, and Bill Parcels became legendary through the subsequent performance of the coaches they mentored. It’s called the Coaching Tree.

In that spirit, allow me to introduce the concept of a Leadership Tree.

[Continue Reading]

Intangible motivation produces tangible results

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Imagine that your best employee just resigned. How much will it cost – directly and indirectly – to find, hire, train and get a replacement to the productivity level of your exiting employee? You already know the answer: maybe years. Not a scenario you want to contemplate, right?

There are many reasons why someone leaves a job, but decades of exit interview records show that compensation is almost never the main reason. Consequently, it’s an article of faith that employees don’t leave companies they leave people – usually a manager. That means that such a disruptive circumstance is likely not only preventable, but the solution is essentially one of those intangibles that cost you little to nothing. Often, just some of your time and attention.

Motivation is one of those intangibles, and smart business owners know about its power. They’ve experienced the direct link between motivating employees to be successful in their assignments and the success of their business.

You can become one of those smart managers before a key employee turns in their keys because he or she merely couldn’t come up with a reason to be motivated to stay. Consider these six motivational best practices.

[Continue Reading]

Patience is not standard equipment on entrepreneurs

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One of the markers of American culture is the “sticker” on the window of a new car. This document reveals to shoppers a listing of standard equipment and options, plus, of course, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price or MSRP.

But what if someone is shopping for an entrepreneur to work for? That may sound silly, but prospective employees do it all the time out here on Main Street. And yes, the money comes into play, but these days, increasingly, it’s the list of “equipment.”

A prospective team member would be justified in expecting the list of entrepreneurial standard equipment to include characteristics like courage, creativity, perseverance and adaptability. Innovative, creative, and visionary are other important line-items. One of the newer expectations increasingly prominent here on the threshold of the third decade of the 21st century is values. What are the values of this prospective entrepreneur/founder/employer? What do this business and its founder stand for?

[Continue Reading]

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