News & Tips
Are You a Talker or a Communicator? Part One
Before I begin this post on communication I feel that I must point out that I’m only writing about half of the communication process. And it’s the least important half. The communication process of course involves speaking and listening. Of the two listening is far more important. Listening is...
Dam, Flow or Flood: How Does Information Travel in Your Organization?
In agile, complex, collaborative organizations, there is a direct connection between the quality of information flow and the quality of results. Shared context (or shared consciousness as described in the great book Team of Teams by General McChrystal) is a fundamental requirement for smart...
How to Make Your Business One of the Best Places to Work
At the turn of a new year, after the parties have ended and we return to our daily lives, people over the world consider how the next 365 days can be even better. We write down our New Year's resolutions and think about what we can to do to improve our health, happiness and prosperity. The same...
How You Deal With Stress Can Ruin Your Employees’ Jobs
While a tight labor market has business leaders seeking to improve retention and engagement, they may be overlooking one critical factor: how their managers respond to stress. A new study by researchers of leadership training company VitalSmarts found that one in three managers can’t handle...
New Apps Can Wreak Havoc on Collectors Trying to Comply With FDCPA: Webinar Panelists
There are apps out there now that imitate the voices of real people and individuals are using them during phone conversations with collection agents as a means of wasting an agent’s time and making it impossible to collect on a debt. That was just one of a number of important topics discussed...
To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them
This year, the unemployment rate in the U.S. hit a 49-year low of 3.7%. The demand for companies to retain top talent is intensifying. One report suggests that employee retention is the number one issue on the minds of CEOs today - not just in the U.S., but around the world. And yet, companies...
This Is the Best Sales and Networking Trick, Bar None
An absurdly easy tweak that turns a dud strategy into a magic bullet. I'm always looking for tactics and techniques that are quick to execute but have an outsized positive result. In all the years I've been in business, I have never found a simple tweakthat's this fast, easy and effective....
An Open Letter From An Agency Owner to His Congressman
Recently, the owner of a collection agency reached out to me and shared a letter he had written to his local Congressman. The letter, which you can read excerpts of below, talks about the pains of dealing with frivolous lawsuits and the impact that defending against them, in terms of hirings that...
Some of Your Employees are Probably Stealing From You. Here are Five Ways to Put an End to It
Failing to proactively take steps to protect your business from employee fraud schemes is like leaving the door to a vault holding your valuable assets unlocked and unguarded. Few entrepreneurs who run small enterprises ever consider the fact that their companies are at risk of falling victim to...