New York SBDC Research Network

      I n the spirit of new year's resolutions, I wanted to share a couple of articles on being a leader for your business. These items are about the need for leadership and what that means. Many people don't consider their leadership style; they either inherit a method or randomly strike out without a plan. Organizations often randomly develop a cobbled together method that is predominantly reactionary. We admire companies that have a well-developed set of goals and philosophy but don't sit down to translate values into an approach for ourselves. Putting out fires is necessary but equipping your business with a value system that can be flexible and respects all involved ensures that employees and partners are equipped to handle the inevitable challenges that arise. Like any other skill, leadership skills can be developed. Organizing people toward a shared goal may seem like herding cats but most people want to do better. Seizing on that impulse is key and can be encourag...

By Jane Smith From Gallup Do your best to make everyone who reports to you, directly or indirectly, feel heard. Specifically ask, "Is there something I could have done better in that situation?" or, "What do you need from me?" Depending on your role, schedule team feedback sessions or company town halls with time dedicated to open Q&A. Hearing the true state of things can be jarring, especially if the culture at your company is for leaders to be cheerleaders for an initiative or change. You need to know how those changes affect people down the line. People want to do what you hired them to do. They also want to know that you depend on their expertise -- that their role is important, and you trust them.

From Gallup : Fear. Anxiety. Stress. Anger. Not exactly the emotions we're hoping to invoke in our employees, right? Not exactly the key to motivational management, anyway. Unfortunately, those are the emotions many people feel when it's time to discuss their work metrics. Employees dread the idea of their manager reducing them to a number. A number that might be accurate and important but doesn't accurately reflect all they bring to their job. And no matter the niceties of how it's all delivered, people get defensive and deflated. Why? "The very act of measuring communicates distrust, power, control and dehumanization." That's what one fellow student said when the topic of performance measurement came up in my Ph.D. class. He was right. And he was wrong. He was right because measurement can be dehumanizing. Managers, intentionally or not, end up using measurements negatively in an attempt to motivate people. But it doesn't work. How ...

From Daily Inequality : Younger employees keep getting stereotyped as insecure and needy - perhaps the rest of us need to reconsider why we find it normal for bosses to be jerks Recently, the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine circulated a video meant to make its instructors aware of "student mistreatment." With a minor-chord piano medley providing the soundtrack, viewers were asked to avoid putting students on the spot with questions, to minimize "cold and clinical" interactions, and to cultivate "safe" learning environments for the young residents. It seems a little like something created by The Onion, but the video was sincere, and its message will be familiar to a lot of employers dealing with people in their 20s. For many who remember what business was like pre-Internet, millennials seem an appallingly sensitive lot, having been protected from the vagaries of the world by helicopter parents, trigger warnings and—to especially cy...

Employee Handbooks The company employee handbook is one of the most important communication tools between your company and your employees. Not only does it set forth your expectations for your employees, but it also describes what they can expect from the company. It is essential that your company has one and that it be as clear and unambiguous as possible. Make certain that it is written in an understandable language which makes the company's policies accessible. The company employee handbook and related personnel policies are usually the first formal communication that you will have with an employee after they join your team. Make sure the first impression is a good one. Similarly, in the event of a dispute or poor performance review, this will be the first place that the employee turns. What Should an Employee Handbook Include? See BusinessUSA

From Everyman Business : Everyman Business offers a wealth of free business advice, training segments, articles and information on online marketing, labor laws, human resources, business software, technology and much more. EverymanBusiness.com helps business professionals save time and money by addressing real-world business questions and presenting practical solutions. Our site offers resources including: Management – Anyone who has ever worked under an inefficient or unorganized manager has experienced firsthand how it can affect work flow and productivity. Learn good leadership tips, proper business reporting, project management skills and more. Logistics - As an industry deals with technology, process and use of supply chain management. That is to say, how your product arrives to your consumers. Read about a variety of air freight options, drop shipping, trucking and warehousing options here. Equipment & Supplies – No office would be complete and functioning without o...

Why does anybody swap suppliers? Sometimes it’s because there is a cheaper alternative but mostly it isn’t. Would you swap dentists because a cheaper one set up next door? This is very unlikely. In reality people keep the status quo and only move on for a reason and in most cases whether they stay or go is up to you. Here are three of the most popular causes for client departures:  -“Perceived indifference”: The client thinks you don’t care anymore even though you do. They feel neglected and can only look back with wistful fondness to the days when you were courting them and couldn’t do enough for them. They just want to be loved and cared for but sadly you’re just not hitting the spot any more. -Poor quality: You simply aren’t delivering the quality they expect for the money they’re paying and because of point 1 above you don’t even know it. Regardless of the product or service you offer great quality is the best form of protection you can get. -Knock-out deals: One o...

From MoneyWatch : Managers, you may rate 10 percent of your people "superior performers," 40 percent as "exceeds expectations," 40 percent as "meets expectations" and the remaining 10 percent as "below expectations." Sound familiar? This breakdown is known as a "stacked ranking" or "forced bell curve ranking." Microsoft (MSFT) was one of the many big companies that used this method to classify how their employees perform. No more. The software maker has declared that approach a failure and scrapped it at precisely the same moment that Yahoo (YHOO) is embracing it... But, what is so bad about stacked rankings?

From the Harvard Business Review : Moody, erratic, eccentric, and arrogant? Perhaps — but you can't just get rid of them. In fact, unless you learn to get the best out of your creative employees, you will sooner or later end up filing for bankruptcy. Conversely, if you just hire and promote people who are friendly and easy to manage, your firm will be mediocre at best. Suppressed creativity is a malign organizational tumour. Although every organization claims to care about innovation, very few are willing to do what it takes to keep their creative people happy, or at least, productive. So what are the keys to engaging and retaining creative employees? [Not that I'd agree with #5, unless Wall Street brokers were paid likewise.]

Want to take your restaurant on the road? Interested in starting a food-service business that affords lower overhead costs than a bricks and mortar restaurant? Starting a mobile food concession business has its advantages – the rent is cheaper, staff overhead is lower, and you can move to follow the profits. But it also has its challenges – weather, vehicle breakdowns, and seasonality, to name a few. And don’t forget, starting a business or expanding into new markets, particularly with on-board food, means you’ll also have to heed laws and regulations that apply when you take your business to the streets. Here’s what you need to know about operating your concession business within the law: 1. Apply for Licenses and Permits Any business needs a license or permit to operate legally, but going mobile requires you to get permits for all the cities and counties where you operate, not just your static business address (which may be your main place of business or your home-based HQ). ...

Teams that are geographically-dispersed, or virtual, have now been used and studied for more than three decades — yet we all still wrestle with how to get them right. Managers frequently ask for best practices for managing their global teams, and recently we've noticed some common themes. Here are the three questions that keep coming up again and again, and what the research tells us about how to address them: 1. When and how often when do we need to meet face-to-face (FTF)? Despite the appeal of completely virtual teams, most team leaders try to convene their teams for face-to-face meetings at some point — leading them to ask how often and when should they do so. We share two robust findings to consider when planning face to face meetings. First, research by Maznevski and Chudoba, Carmel, and others finds that FTF interaction is especially important early in a team's life, particularly when the team is comprised of people who don't already know each other. "Earl...

Using social media to accomplish a meaningful purpose involves more than providing new technology and praying for success. Successful mass collaboration places new requirements on an organization, particularly its managers. While many organizations are technically ready for social media, they should question the readiness of managers to embrace new ways of working collaboratively to achieve social success. Why? Because social media and mass collaboration fundamentally challenge the relationship between responsibility, resources, and management. Normally, managers accept responsibility provided it comes with control of the resources required to deliver on that responsibility. The connection between responsibility and resources sits at the heart of management authority, control, accountability, and organizational design. Look at an organization chart and you will see the distribution of resources and responsibilities — the currency by which managers measure themselves and compare thems...

I recently asked a struggling business owner how he thought he rated as a boss. He responded by asking, How do you know if you’re a good boss? What defines a good boss? No doubt, bosses and employees have different perspectives and can see things differently. To me, a good boss is someone who runs a good company and treats people well. Here are some questions that I think can help assess a boss’s performance:

"Power is the ability to get things done. You could say that management is the art of ensuring that things get done. Yet what's so striking about most organizations is that so little management is effective. "That's what academics Heike Bruch and the late Sumantra Ghoshal discovered when they investigated what they called 'decisive purposeful action.' Most companies, far from being hives of busy, effective executives, could instead be seen as "a few isolated islands of action amid an ocean of inaction," the researchers found. Does this ring any bells? It certainly reminded me of many places I've worked -- and run -- where a small number of people always seemed to be doing the majority of work that mattered." More HERE .

I have suggested the language podcasts on iTunes . They also have business podcasts on various issues. I've been listening to one called How to Give Feedback About Attire on Manager Tools by Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman. It's free and you can also get it from their website . One of the sessions I listened to was about talking to employees about dress codes. It is interesting and talks to this team's approach to managing employees in general. For the purposes of this topic they discuss the ways managers talk to employees - making judgements versus offering feedback on employee behavior with an explanation of impacts. In this scenario, not criticizing clothes specifically, but talking to the choices employees make and how to separate the person from the behavior. They describe situations where a dress code is too specific and tries to codify clothes. The difficulty is where a person is not breaking rules but is making choices that creates less than positive results. Th...