Small business owners and entrepreneurs wear many hats to get all the work done to run their businesses. As the business grows, others join the team in a variety of capacities and a core team develops. Each team member also wears several hats and they often cover for each other as workload increases and pushes time and capacity to the limits. Even with just three members in a core team, maintaining the alignment with your goals, policies and practices can be difficult. Small

Try as you might, you can’t hide your attitude very well. You give off many verbal and behavioral clues that others will interpret, or misinterpret. The good news is that a positive attitude generally produces positive communication and behavior. Faking it to mask a bad attitude simply does not work. As a leader, you must recognize the significant impact of your communication and behavior on those who follow and those who would be partners and advisers. You choose your attitu

A new entrepreneur starting up a first business is often required to learn and embed new behaviors to marshal the business from idea to launch and beyond. The switch from idea generation and evaluation mode to constructive project management to develop products, marketing, teams and partnerships requires an entirely different skillset. All entrepreneurs, and in fact all business leaders, can benefit greatly from a team of advisors available to consult on various subjects at a

You’re the new sheriff in town. The owners or leaders of the business believe you are the person they can rely on to help the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. You know that your success depends on your ability to engage the team (or teams) that report to you in a manner that aligns with the goals and with you as their leader. Sometimes, the process of realignment requires substantial change in direction, practices and even organization culture. Change can inv

Few organizations, if any, inside a corporation can have a bigger impact on overall operating productivity than the IT department. The expertise of IT resources are crucial to lead ‘strategic’ process improvement initiatives to automate inefficient business processes, streamline the integration between business systems both internal and those of suppliers, facilitate access to information to support decision making, enable entirely new methods for reaching and managing custom

If you find yourself stuck in your business by searching for the perfect idea, trade name, people, solution, customer, timing or go to market sequence, you may be a perfectionist. Producing high quality products and services that hit a home run in the market should be the goal of every business owner and entrepreneur. However, regardless of any assumptions you make, no matter how perfect, reality will cause your perfect ideas and plans to change. The result is an imperfect so