Business Employee Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Business Employee. Here they are! All 200 of them:

You can’t have trust without fairness
Hanna Hasl-Kelchner (Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction)
Fairness isn’t about charity. It’s smart business.
Hanna Hasl-Kelchner (Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction)
Leadership begins and ends with relationships
Richard Polak (Work Smart Now: How to Jump Start Productivity, Empower Employees, and Achieve More)
Real leadership is treating your least favorite employee the same as your favorite
Hanna Hasl-Kelchner (Seeking Fairness at Work: Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention & Satisfaction)
Resources are hired to give results, not reasons.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
you must get the right talent and set the proper expectations. If you don’t, you will pay for the job twice—through your employees’ time and your own.
Curtis L. Jenkins (Vision to Reality: Stop Working, Start Living)
Simply giving employees a sense of agency- a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority - can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs.
Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business)
You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Be a worthy worker and work will come.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
If you want to keep your customers happy, start by keeping your employees happy.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Your business and your life will change when you really, really get it that some people are not going to change, no matter what you do, and that still others have a vested interest in being destructive.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Your employees play an important role in writing the chapter on the success of your product.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Communication is how entrepreneurs tell their story, which, in turn, should inspire employees to work smart and encourage customers to action.
Curtis L. Jenkins (Vision to Reality: Stop Working, Start Living)
Building a team is a huge task. This task can’t be delegated to someone else. You’re the leader of your business and you have to behave like a leader for your employees.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
When there is transparency, your employees are aware of how their work is contributing to the project which makes them become more committed to the project.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Clearly defined job roles will eliminate any kind of dilemma. It will help an employee better understand what they are supposed to achieve as a part of their job description.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A good vision will not just give your employees much-needed direction but also much-valued inspiration to do their work efficiently.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
your employees need more than just paychecks.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Employees of a company need to be bound together with love and respect, and not by dissatisfaction and helplessness.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Employee loyalty is cheaper than hiring new employees, training them, and motivating them.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
If your employees are happy, they become your salespeople who speak with utmost passion for the company they work for.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A discontent employee means not getting the results 100% and the loss of a company advocate as well.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Employees learn about the importance of consistency and quality control through their training program.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
When you invest in your employees’ development, they’ll spend their skills in your company’s development.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Trust plays an important role in making you a great leader because if your employees don’t trust you, they won’t trust your vision or the action plan that you will share with them.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A good management style will make the productivity of your employees go up which means your revenues and profits go up as well.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Those days of autocratic leadership style are gone. It’s the age of partnerships where all your employees are your partners.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A team is built when your employees are inspired by the same vision and connected with the same goal.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Loyalty development is tied to motivation, if you know what motivates an employee, you will be able to turn that into loyalty development.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
When employees are able to feel what you feel and see what you see in your idea, you won’t need anything else to motivate them, and success will become inevitable.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Hiring is not as simple as you think. You have to make sure you are hiring somebody who is going to be a great fit in the kind of employee tribe you’re building.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Effective two-way communication is responsible for building the trust in a company and keeping the employees happy.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Transparency when things are going well and even when things are going bad, keeps all your employees in the chain which makes them feel connected to the project even more.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Building an employee team or employee tribe is a little time consuming which requires little effort but in the long process of achieving business growth, it’s totally worth it.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
If you are hard to work with, you won’t be able to build good and profitable business relationships. You might lose many good business partners, vendors, and even employees because they will find it tough to work with you.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
The first and the only rule of team building is employees being comfortable with each other.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A good work culture and work environment is very crucial in helping your employees to put their best foot forward.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
One thing we should never forget is that the work of all the employees in a company depends on each other. What one does will affect another.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Your employees shouldn’t be scared of being let go but you should be scared of them leaving you.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
When a business streamlines its processes, it inevitably experiences other benefits which may include greater employee satisfaction, more profits, better accounting, and more.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
A vision needs to show the future goals of your company and these goals need to be beneficial for all including your employees, customers, stakeholders, and most importantly, the environment.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
In this global economy of rapid change, innovation is not a nice-to-have anymore - it's a necessity. Every employee in the business needs to be innovation capable or innovation adaptive.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
You need an environment where your employees are not afraid to share even their silliest ideas. A place where they are respected, loved and heard, where they feel like an important part of the team.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Your task should be to share the goals and some important instructions related to your brand image, rest how that project needs to be executed so that the goals are met is going to be your employees’ task now.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Training looks like a financial loss to many but when your employees learn something new and implement the same for your company, they improve efficiency of your business process which gives you a competitive edge.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
73. ...There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.
Theodore John Kaczynski (Industrial Society and Its Future)
Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Sometimes the right business decision is to let it go - to let go of an underperforming employee, to let go of an unprofitable branch, to let go of a weak advertising campaign, and to let go of an idea that fails to create the hype you wanted it to be.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
You have to start treating your employees as equals and start sharing things with honesty. By doing so, it will make them feel a part of the project, but it will also make them think of new and improved ways of doing the same things.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A business is an ensemble of people. The energies, attitudes and personalities of employees come together and form the energy, attitude and personality of the business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
It's just as great to be an employee as it is to be an entrepreneur. Great employees add immense value to businesses and therefore to markets and to economies. Being an employee is important.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
A major determinant of a businesses success is the productivity of its employees.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
When companies act ethically, they build trust with their employees, customers, investors, and communities.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
The best way to help your consumers with your business is to treat your employees right so they give better customer service, empower them so they can provide faster solutions, and to treat your vendors and partners fairly and with respect so they can continually provide the best product and services to their ability. - Strong by Kailin Gow
Kailin Gow
One of the most important types of decision making is deciding what you are not going to do, what you need to eliminate in order to make room for strategic investments.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
Wisdom comes from experience, either the experience of others or of oneself. And to let experience do its work, a person has to be open to receiving the lessons that it has to teach.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Businesses are at all times and in different ways accountable to employees, suppliers, customers and community.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change...A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Loyalty is important, one of the most important character traits we can have. But loyal love does not mean infinite and/or misplaced responsibility for another's life, nor does it mean that one forever puts up with mistreatment out of inappropriate loyalty.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Sometimes there is bleeding when you cut out a cancer.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Most people don't need to be babied through business processes. Most often, what they need is a clear understanding of the objective and access to available resources. From there, they'll leverage their own creative capacity and skillets to ensure that the objective is accomplished.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn’t bother with the pretenses. They’re just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code— the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.
Jim Butcher (Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8))
If climate drives business results, what drives climate? 50-70% of how employees perceive their organization’s climate corresponds to the actions of one person: their manager.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
...[D]ivision of labor, in my mind, is one of the dangers of work-based technology. Modern IT infrastructure allows us to break projects into very small, discrete parts and assign each person to do only one of the many parts. In so doing, companies run the risk of taking away employees' sense of the big picture, purpose, and sense of completion.
Dan Ariely (The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home)
Engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and committed to the company's success. They become passionate advocates for your brand and contribute to a positive work environment that attracts and retains top talent.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
Even as an entrepreneur, you need to see yourself as an employee of your business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
In order to have a healthy economy, we need both entrepreneurs and employees. We need business of every size and we need people to accept the many jobs offered by those businesses. So it's okay to celebrate entrepreneurship, but let's also celebrate the good things about being an employee.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
It's good to celebrate the value your business adds. Every employee in the business should celebrate the value the business adds. What you celebrate, you give life to. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Providing employment is the best form of social service, as it serves you, others, your country, your world - the entire society.
Amit Kalantri
Children imitate their parents, employees their managers.
Amit Kalantri
Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending. —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
To paraphrase Einstein, insanity is expecting employees to do one thing while rewarding them for doing something else.
Robert G. Thompson (Hooked on Customers: The Five Habits of Legendary Customer-Centric Companies)
The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and the intellectual capital are managed by the human capital. You'd better get the human capital part right.
Dave Bookbinder (The NEW ROI: Return on Individuals: Do you believe that people are your company's most valuable asset?)
Pruning is strategic. It is directional and forward-looking. It is intentional toward a vision, desires, and objectives that have been clearly defined and are measurable. If you have that, you know what a rose is, and pruning will help you get one of true beauty.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Page 99: "...unless something changes, the future that you can expect is more of the past. Sorry or becoming committed does not make Jim Carrey a great golfer, or made Jack nicklaus funny. Recommitment does not make a person who is unsuited for a particular position suited for it all of a sudden. Promises by someone who has a history of letting you down in a relationship mean nothing certain in terms of the future.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
first, accept life cycles and seasons; second, accept that life produces too much life, and third, accept that incurable illness and sometimes evil are part of life too. Taken together, these three principles will help you to make peace with endings, so that when their time has come, you will be able to do what you need to do.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Employees need to feel trusted and respected at work. Everyone at the company should feel that trust and that respect.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
I hired a counterfeiter the other day. I told him, “As for your salary, how much you make is really up to you.” I love a business model where the employee pays the employer.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
Don't be that employee that complains all the time!
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
Mediocre people promote mediocrity. Dont hire mediocre people. Instead, hire people who strive for greatness and they'll spread that greatness throughout the company.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When people love the work they do, they bring something special and unique to the job.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Accept that no matter where you go to work, you are not an employee - you are a business with one employee, you. Andy Grove, CEO, Intel
Andrew S. Grove
Don't be that employee that complains all the time! Instead, be that employee that sees opportunities within the business and weeks to collaborate with colleagues and management to make the business better.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
I think I screamed. She certainly did. I started to walk away, she followed. We continued to scream at each other. We were in the middle of a busy square. People stopped to look at us. A lot of people. I wonder now what they thought. That Jin-Ae was my wife? My lover? Surely not an ambitious employee haranguing her boss!
Oliver Dowson
Leadership requires kindness. If the people in positions of power in the company are cruel and mean to the other employees, it puts the whole company into a fear vibration. And that repels customers. Leaders should be stern, but kind; bold, but gracious. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
So if you feel resistance about executing a certain ending, figure out what two or more desires are in conflict, admit to yourself that you can have only one, and then ask yourself this question: Which one am I willing to give up to have the other one?
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
In the language of Ecclesiastes, are there situations in business or in life where you are trying to birth things that should be dying? Trying to heal something that should be killed off? Laughing at something that you should be weeping about? Embracing something (or someone) you should shun? Searching for an answer for something when it is time to give up? Continuing to try to love something or someone when it is time to talk about what you hate?
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
You get teamwork in the workplace by giving teamwork in the workplace. It's not only about your personal career success or your colleagues' personal career success, but it's also about the success of the company - which is good for everyone employed at the company.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
It's good when employees enjoy working with each other and contribute to each other's productivity. That's an indicator of synergy within a company.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When your employees enjoy holistic health, your business is better able to add value and serve it's customers.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The big deal is that if employees aren't engaged, your company will suffer.
Susan Scott (Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today)
Which came first: the change-ready company or the change-ready employee?
Lorii Myers (Targeting Success, Develop the Right Business Attitude to be Successful in the Workplace (3 Off the Tee, #1))
When employees see each other as teammates and encourage each other to do a better job, everyone in the company shares in the rewards.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
As an employee, you should care about the profitability of your employer. If the company you work for is succeeding in the marketplace, that means more job security for you.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
It's fun working with people who pursue greatness in everything they do. It's fun working with people who hold themselves to high standards.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Employees keep the business doing what it does. It's important to pay them accordingly.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Every employee has a story, and each of them deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Toxic employees pose a much bigger threat to the success of the company than all of the competitors combined.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Every company should prioritize the health and safety of it's employees.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
A successful organization relies on the collaborative efforts of its employees, board members, and stakeholders.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
The world’s most valuable companies develop intellectual capital by investing smartly in their employees.
Roger Spitz (Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World)
You can’t prune toward anything if you don’t know what you want. You have to figure out what you are trying to be or build and then define what the pruning standards are going to be. That definition and those standards will bring you to the pruning moments, wherein you either own the vision or you don’t.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Our society today celebrates entrepreneurship way too much. It's great to be an entrepreneur. But it's also great to be an employee. In order to have a healthy economy, we need both entrepreneurs and employees. We need business of every size and we need people to accept the many jobs offered by those businesses.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Ethical governance fosters a culture of integrity and accountability within the organization. This can lead to improved employee engagement, reduced misconduct, and enhanced risk management.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
One cannot measure a manager’s knowledge and performance in a vacuum. It involves their participation in business activities while bringing all of themselves to the process of development, including their spiritual, personal, and skill & ability development.
Raymond Wheeler (Lift: Five Practices Great Managers Do Consistently: Raise Performance and Morale - See Your Employees Thrive)
People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense. Would you want to stand on the line of the untrained person at McDonald’s? Would you want to use the software written by the engineer who was never told how the rest of the code worked? A lot of companies think their employees are so smart that they require no training. That’s silly. When I first became a manager,
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
All of your precious resources - time, energy, talent, passion, and money - should only go to the areas of your life or your business that are best, are fixable, and are indespensable. Otherwise, average sets in and [your life] does not become what it was designed to be.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Misconceptions of business are almost inevitable in a society where most people have neither studied nor run businesses. In a society where most people are employees and consumers, it is easy to think of businesses as “them” – as impersonal organizations, whose internal operations are largely unknown and whose sums of money may sometimes be so huge as to be unfathomable.
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy)
In the United States, government regulations are estimated to cost about $7,800 per employee in large businesses and about $10,600 per employee in small businesses.{662} Among other things, this suggests that the existence of numerous government regulations tends to give competitive advantages to big business, since there are apparently economies of scale in complying with these regulations.
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy)
In many contexts, until we let go of what is not good, we will never find something that is good. The lesson: good cannot begin until bad ends.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
My men are my money.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
If you fulfill the wishes of your employees, the employees will fulfill your visions.
Amit Kalantri
As employees, executives and entrepreneurs — let’s stay humble.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (4 Business Lessons From Jesus: A businessmans interpretation of Jesus' teachings, applied in a business context.)
When employees are unhappy with their job, they underperform and they're less productive. Smart employers invest in employee happiness.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
In this ever changing world of ours, it's important for employees to be curious and lifelong learners.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Every company should desire for all of its employees to enjoy varying degrees of wealth and prosperity.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Don't hire someone who has a bad attitude. One persons bad attitude can wreak psychological havoc on a team of employees.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When employees feel they're loved and appreciated by the company and by other employees, they tend to be more productive.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When employees feel valued and respected, and when they trust that their company operates with integrity, they are more likely to be motivated, productive, and loyal.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
there cannot be alignment deeper in the organization, even when employees want to cooperate, if the leaders at the top aren’t in lockstep with one another
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
When you were making excuses someone else was making enterprise.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
Harvard Business Publishing (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself (with bonus article "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen))
B-quadrant businesses get tax credits for hiring employees, for increasing their research and development, and for investing in green technology.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Education on Tax Secrets)
How a business presents itself is very indicative of that businesses sense of self and about how much value and respect it’s owners and employees attribute to it. If the owners and employees don’t respect the business, neither will the customers and potential customers.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The code-of-ethics playlist: o Treat your colleagues, family, and friends with respect, dignity, fairness, and courtesy. o Pride yourself in the diversity of your experience and know that you have a lot to offer. o Commit to creating and supporting a world that is free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. o Have balance in your life and help others to do the same. o Invest in yourself, achieve ongoing enhancement of your skills, and continually upgrade your abilities. o Be approachable, listen carefully, and look people directly in the eyes when speaking. o Be involved, know what is expected from you, and let others know what is expected from them. o Recognize and acknowledge achievement. o Celebrate, relive, and communicate your successes on an ongoing basis.
Lorii Myers (Targeting Success, Develop the Right Business Attitude to be Successful in the Workplace (3 Off the Tee, #1))
There isn’t much room for ego in leading a business. The business will experience the greatest success when the leaders and employees of the business focus less on self and more on pleasing customers.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Employees aren't inanimate objects that can just be moved around like bricks. They're people with emotions and goals and comittments and more. They should be treated like stakeholders, because they are.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
As managers, we should hire people whose values align with the values of the company, and then trust them to do their job well. If you have to micromanage an employee, one of you isn't a fit for the company.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
Hire people who are committed to self improvement in their everyday life. If they're someone who prioritizes self improvement even in their personal life, they'll probably prioritize self improvement at work.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
There is a difference between helping someone who is disabled, incapable, or otherwise infirm versus helping someone who is resisting growing up and taking care of what every adult (or child, for that matter) has to be responsible for: herself or himself. When you find yourself in any way paying for someone else’s responsibilities, not only are you stuck with a delayed ending, but you are probably harming that person.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
We, in the interest of the so-called progress, have been persuaded to leave the production and at times the cooking of our food to companies whose owners and employees make a living by exploiting our busyness or laziness and our innate hunger to continue living.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
The Tanakh teaches that, “The diligent will rule, while the lazy will be put to forced labor”. Most Jews work for themselves and hire employees instead of being employees.
H.W. Charles (The Money Code: Become a Millionaire With the Ancient Jewish Code)
A true professional not only follows but loves the processes, policies and principles set by his profession.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Some managers are able to let go of the past better than others. Those that have the greatest difficulty abandoning things are often those unable to face reality.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
All of your precious resources—time, energy, talent, passion, money—should only go to the buds of your life or your business that are the best, are fixable, and are indispensable.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Able hands' are more favorable to business than 'adorable hearts'.
Amit Kalantri
The job of human resources is to make sure that resources come to work with their hearts and go back to their homes with happiness.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
A talented entrepreneur with bad habits eventually becomes an employee. An average employee with great habits can eventually become a great entrepreneur.
Patrick Bet-David (Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy)
One way businesses become more efficient is when technology allows employees to simplify tasks.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
If you want to have a team of competent employees, it's important to have a comprehensive training program in place.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Having clear processes and systems in place is critical to ensuring employee safety.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Having a diverse set of employees is good for business — it enables the business to better serve customers, better solve problems, and better innovate.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Employees should be paid on time and in full every time.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
When your employees are happy at work, they do a better job. And when they do a better job, customers feel it. And when customers feel that happiness coming from a companies employees, it's like they just wanna spend their money there.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
A good manager is always looking to cultivate talent in people, and a good manager is always looking to find employees doing something right so they can give compliments and encourage the team to keep doing the good things they're doing.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
A bad attitude from a chronic complaining employee is like a cancer; it will only spread and infect others. This can take your business down in a nanosecond. You must cut out the cancer and invite them to seek employment elsewhere. Quickly.
Beth Ramsay (#Networking is people looking for people looking for people)
There really are two Americas, one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided, an overwhelming, all-powerful entity whose attentions usually presage some kind of financial setback, if not complete ruin. In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog that the financial companies that will be the major players in this book use as a tool for making money.
Matt Taibbi (Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America)
After putting economics aside, I found that there were two primary reasons why people quit:   They hated their manager; generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development, and feedback they were receiving.   They weren’t learning anything: The company wasn’t investing resources in helping employees develop new skills.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
Transitioning a company from present state to future state is not just about the company at large, but also about every single employee and customer and partner also transitioning from present state to future state. We have to consider the macro and the micro if the transition is going to be successful.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Many people wish for a different universe than the one in which we live. They want one where every day is harvest time and there are no long laborious summer months to go through in order to get there. And when the harvest is ripe and they are thriving, they want no approaching winters where they see that the harvest is over and a cold death is looming.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Under-slept employees are not, therefore, going to drive your business forward with productive innovation. Like a group of people riding stationary exercise bikes, everyone looks like they are pedaling, but the scenery never changes. The irony that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal. This means you often must work longer and later into the evening, arrive home later, go to bed later, and need to wake up earlier, creating a negative feedback loop. Why try to boil a pot of water on medium heat when you could do so in half the time on high? People often tell me that they do not have enough time to sleep because they have so much work to do. Without wanting to be combative in any way whatsoever, I respond by informing them that perhaps the reason they still have so much to do at the end of the day is precisely because they do not get enough sleep at night.
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams)
A business is in alignment if it’s employees feel a sense of fulfillment from working for the business and its customers feel a sense of fulfillment from buying from the business. In this case, fulfillment is in both the exhale and the inhale of the businesses activity. And this cycle of fulfillment will lead to sales and profits.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
When your company is contemplating change, it's important to take inventory of employees perception. Does everyone in the company understand the need for making the changes being contemplated? And is everyone in the company committed to the changes? These are important considerations.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
But until then, you might find yourself laboring much longer than you should, still trying to get someone to change, thinking that one more coaching session will do the trick—or one more bit of encouragement, or one more session of feedback or confrontation. Or worse, one more concession.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you.
Andrew S. Grove (Only the Paranoid Survive)
...Why are corporations so fleeting?...Instead of imitating the freewheeling city, these businesses minimize the very interactions that lead to new ideas. They erect walls and establish hierarchies. They keep people from relaxing and having insights. They stifle conversations, discourage dissent, and suffocate social networks. Rather than maximizing employee creativity they become obsessed with minor efficiencies.
Jonah Lehrer (Imagine: How Creativity Works)
But Burnham also created an office culture that anticipated that of businesses that would not appear for another century. He installed a gym. During lunch hour employees played handball. Burnham gave fencing lessons. Root played impromptu recitals on a rented piano. “The office was full of a rush of work,” Starrett said, “but the spirit of the place was delightfully free and easy and human in comparison with other offices I had worked in.
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
The entrepreneur’s mind-set is completely different to the employee’s mind-set. The entrepreneur finds it abhorrent to conform to organizational norms, whilst the employee finds joy and stability in all that’s tried and true. It’s not that one’s wrong and the other is right. It’s the mind-set that differentiates the two.
Dipa Sanatani (The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey)
If we accept the premise that pruning is necessary but still notice that we have an emotional misalignment with that premise, we will struggle to realize our vision of the future and our potential. But if you can become aware of your resistances and internal conflicts now, then you can begin to face them and work them through.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion. They realize that most of their employees want to succeed, and that the best way to allow them to do that is to give them clear direction, regular information about how they’re doing, and access to the coaching they need.
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
Leadership requires kindness. If the people in positions of power in the company are cruel and mean to the other employees, it puts the whole company into a fear vibration. And that repels customers. Leaders should be stern, but kind; bold, but gracious. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions. At Mayflower-Plymouth, we're here to help your business figure this out, and to provide holistic solutions.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
How your business makes your customers feel has a direct correlation to how much money they are willing to spend with your business and the promptness with which they spend money with your business. You should make your customers feel welcome, make them feel appreciated, make them feel respected. And show customers that your business is valuable by ensuring that you and every employee treats the business with care and respect.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
When we're talking about implementing change in business, it's good have a holistic view and to consider all of the dynamics, including: What is the scope of the change? Who is being impacted (customers, employees, others)? How are people being impacted, and in what way? Are there different perspectives regarding the experience of the change? What exactly is being changed (systems, processes, jobs)? What is the expected timeline for the change?
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their responsibilities? Were there not more important ambitions to be met before Death showed himself on the horizon in his hooded black cloak, his scythe slung over his shoulder?
Alain de Botton (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work)
Jobs and Clow agreed that Apple was one of the great brands of the world, probably in the top five based on emotional appeal, but they needed to remind folks what was distinctive about it. So they wanted a brand image campaign, not a set of advertisements featuring products. It was designed to celebrate not what the computers could do, but what creative people could do with the computers. " This wasn't about processor speed or memory," Jobs recalled. " It was about creativity." It was directed not only at potential customers, but also at Apple's own employees: " We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are. That was the genesis of that campaign.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee. The words "maximum prosperity" are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.
Frederick Winslow Taylor (The Principles of Scientific Management)
Investors are people with more money than time. Employees are people with more time than money. Entrepreneurs are simply the seductive go-betweens. Startups are business experiments performed with other people’s money. Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.” “Company culture is what goes without saying. There are no real rules, only laws. Success forgives all sins. People who leak to you, leak about you. Meritocracy is the propaganda we use to bless the charade. Greed and vanity are the twin engines of bourgeois society. Most managers are incompetent and maintain their jobs via inertia and politics. Lawsuits are merely expensive feints in a well-scripted conflict narrative between corporate entities. Capitalism is an amoral farce in which every player—investor, employee, entrepreneur, consumer—is complicit.
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
Let us consider the power of FAITH, as it is now being demonstrated, by a man who is well known to all of civilization, Mahatma Gandhi, of India. In this man the world has one of the most astounding examples known to civilization, of the possibilities of FAITH. Gandhi wields more potential power than any man living at this time, and this, despite the fact that he has none of the orthodox tools of power, such as money, battle ships, soldiers, and materials of warfare. Gandhi has no money, he has no home, he does not own a suit of clothes, but HE DOES HAVE POWER. How does he come by that power? HE CREATED IT OUT OF HIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRINCIPLE OF FAITH, AND THROUGH HIS ABILITY TO TRANSPLANT THAT FAITH INTO THE MINDS OF TWO HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE. Gandhi has accomplished, through the influence of FAITH, that which the strongest military power on earth could not, and never will accomplish through soldiers and military equipment. He has accomplished the astounding feat of INFLUENCING two hundred million minds to COALESCE AND MOVE IN UNISON, AS A SINGLE MIND. What other force on earth, except FAITH could do as much? There will come a day when employees as well as employers will discover the possibilities of FAITH. That day is dawning. The whole world has had ample opportunity, during the recent business depression, to witness what the LACK OF FAITH will do to business.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
Ultimately, a culture of levity creates a safe place for employees. When you feel safe and feel like you’re being led through levity versus fear, you’re much more apt to take chances. You’re more likely to try things without worrying about being ridiculed, or ostracized. You’re more willing to innovate—to push new ideas and to push against old ideas.
Jennifer Aaker (Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.))
If customers and clients are happy - living more fulfilled lives, living more joyful lives, more abundant lives... If business owners, managers and employees are happy - living more fulfilled lives, more abundant lives, more peaceful lives... Of course that's going to ripple out into society. That joy, that fulfillment, that abundance - it's going to ripple outwards.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Once a year Jobs took his most valuable employees on a retreat, which he called " The Top 100." They were picked based on a simple guideline: the people you would bring if you could take only a hundred people with you on a lifeboat to your next company. At the end of each retreat, Jobs would stand in front of the whiteboard( he loved whiteboards because they gave him complete control of a situation and they engendered focus) and ask, " What are ten things we should be doing next?" People would fight to their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down, and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of ten.Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, " We can only do three.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
The one with the plan is the one with the power. It doesn’t matter in what kind of activity you’re involved. Employees want to follow the business leader with a good business plan. Volunteers want to join the pastor with a good ministry plan. Children want to be with the adult who has the well-thought-out vacation plan. If you practice strategic thinking, others will listen to you and they will want to follow you. If
John C. Maxwell (How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life)
The travails of being an employee include not only uncertainty about the duration of one's employment, but also the humiliation of many working practices and dynamics. With most businesses shaped like pyramids, in which a wide base of employees gives way to a narrow tip of managers, the question of who will be rewarded - and who left behind - typically develops into one of the most oppressive of the workplace, and one which, like all anxieties, feeds off uncertainty. Because achievement in most fields is difficult to monitor reliably, the path to promotion or its oppositie can acquire an apparently haphazard connection to results. The succesful alpinist of organizational pyramids may not be the best at their jobs, but those who have best mastered a range of dark political arts in which civilized life does not usually offer instruction.
Alain de Botton (Status Anxiety (Vintage International))
Of the twelve, the most powerful questions (to employees, guaging their satisfaction with their employers) are those witha combination of the strongest links to the most business outcomes (to include profitability). Armed with this perspective, we now know that the following six ar ethe most powerful questions: 1) Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? 3) Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? 4) In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? 5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? 6) Is there someone at work who encourages my development? As a manager, if you want to know what you should do to build a strong and productive workplace, securing 5s to these six questions would be an excellent place to start.
Marcus Buckingham
In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s businesses and banks. This inventory — it should perhaps be called the bezzle — amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks. … Just as the boom accelerated the rate of growth, so the crash enormously advanced the rate of discovery. Within a few days, something close to a universal trust turned into something akin to universal suspicion. Audits were ordered. Strained or preoccupied behavior was noticed. Most important, the collapse in stock values made irredeemable the position of the employee who had embezzled to play the market. He now confessed.
John Kenneth Galbraith (The Great Crash 1929)
Where workers do lose their jobs due to automation, it’s not because they themselves are replaced by some piece of software. It’s often because the firms they work for fail. And the firms they work for fail because their management or shareholders are unwilling or unable to keep up with the new possibilities of technology. That failure often extends to failing to invest in the training that their employees need to implement the latest technologies.
Azeem Azhar (The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society)
So getting your brain to move to create an ending, and getting the people around you to do the same, is going to take both: the fear of the negative and the draw of the positive. Your brain needs to really get it—that if you don’t move, something bad is going to happen, and also that if you do, you will get what you desire. You have to break through the comfort level that you are in, where you are settling for living in hell just because you know the names of all the streets. Remember, you were not designed to cope but to thrive. But just like a rosebush, you can’t thrive without pruning, which means your necessary endings truly are urgent. Let’s look at how to get there.
Henry Cloud (Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward)
Google gets $59 billion, and you get free search and e-mail. A study published by the Wall Street Journal in advance of Facebook’s initial public offering estimated the value of each long-term Facebook user to be $80.95 to the company. Your friendships were worth sixty-two cents each and your profile page $1,800. A business Web page and its associated ad revenue were worth approximately $3.1 million to the social network. Viewed another way, Facebook’s billion-plus users, each dutifully typing in status updates, detailing his biography, and uploading photograph after photograph, have become the largest unpaid workforce in history. As a result of their free labor, Facebook has a market cap of $182 billion, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has a personal net worth of $33 billion. What did you get out of the deal? As the computer scientist Jaron Lanier reminds us, a company such as Instagram—which Facebook bought in 2012—was not valued at $1 billion because its thirteen employees were so “extraordinary. Instead, its value comes from the millions of users who contribute to the network without being paid for it.” Its inventory is personal data—yours and mine—which it sells over and over again to parties unknown around the world. In short, you’re a cheap date.
Marc Goodman (Future Crimes)
Fill. The third phase of dominion is to “fill” or “replenish” the earth. Bearing fruit, refining our gift, and mastering the use of our resources create demand and lead naturally to wider “distribution.” To “fill the earth” means to expand our gift, our influence, our resources, just as a growing business would by continually improving its product, opening new outlets, and hiring more employees. Another way to look at it is to think once again of an apple tree. A single apple seed grows into an apple tree, which then produces apples, each of which contains seeds for producing more trees. Planting those seeds soon turns a single apple tree into a whole orchard. This expansion to “fill the earth” is a joint effort between the Lord and us. Our part is to be faithful with the resources He has given. He is the one who brings the expansion. The more faithful we are with our stewardship, the more resources God will entrust to us. That is a biblical principle.
Myles Munroe (The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage)
This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them toward simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice. ... Identify a person's strenths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.
Marcus Buckingham
you have to accept that no matter where you work, you are not an employee—you are in a business with one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses. There are millions of others all over the world, picking up the pace, capable of doing the same work that you can do and perhaps more eager to do it. Now, you may be tempted to look around your workplace and point to your fellow workers as rivals, but they are not. They are outnumbered—a thousand to one, one hundred thousand to one, a million to one—by people who work for organizations that compete with your firm. So if you want to work and continue to work, you must continually dedicate yourself to retaining your individual competitive advantage.
Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
Everybody talks about freedom, citizens," the big man said gently, seeming to draw upon that very sure source of personal knowledge again, "but they dont really want it. Half of them wants it but the other half dont. What they really want is to maintain an illusion of freedom in front of their wives and business associates. Its a satisfactory compromise, and as long they can have that they can get along without the other which is more expensive. The only trouble is, every man who declares himself free to his friends has to make a slave out of his wife and employees to keep up the illusion and prove it; the wife to be free in front of her bridgeclub has to command her Help, Husband and Heirs. It resolves itself into a battle; whoever wins, the other one loses. For every general in this world there have to be 6,000 privates.
James Jones (From Here to Eternity)
Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new...If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low. These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot. The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who make a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated.
Seth Godin (Poke the Box)
Several years ago we added “my pleasure” to the manners chart after we read the book How Did You Do It, Truett? by S. Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A. In it, Mr. Cathy tells how he studied the methods of five-star hotels and found that workers are required to say “My pleasure” instead of “You’re welcome” when being thanked for something. In essence, one is saying, “Thank you for giving me the pleasure of serving you,” and not, “Yes, it was such a sacrifice on my part. You’re welcome.” He found a direct link between business success and employees learning to treat costumers with the utmost courtesy and respect, and that was one of the principles he adopted for all Chick-fil-A workers.
Jill Duggar (Growing Up Duggar: It's All about Relationships)
Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence. Like technical debt, the trade-off sometimes makes sense, but often does not. More important, if you incur the management debt without accounting for it, then you will eventually go management bankrupt. Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
Our living quarters were in the same compound as the Eastern District administration. Government offices were mostly housed in large mansions which had been confiscated from Kuomintang officials and wealthy landlords. All government employees, even senior officials, lived at their office. They were not allowed to cook at home, and all ate in canteens. The canteen was also where everyone got their boiled water, which was fetched in thermos flasks. Saturday was the only day married couples were allowed to spend together. Among officials, the euphemism for making love was 'spending a Saturday." Gradually, this regimented life-style relaxed a bit and married couples were able to spend more time together, but almost all still lived and spent most of their time in their office compounds. My mother's department ran a very broad field of activities, including primary education, health, entertainment, and sounding out public opinion. At the age of twenty-two, my mother was in charge of all these activities for about a quarter of a million people. She was so busy we hardly ever saw her. The government wanted to establish a monopoly (known as 'unified purchasing and marketing') over trade in the basic commodities grain, cotton, edible o'fi, and meat. The idea was to get the peasants to sell these exclusively to the government, which would then ration them out to the urban population and to parts of the country where they were in short supply.
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another. Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation – a water main or an electric cable is being repaired – and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there. All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible.
W.H. Auden (The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays)
In a mass society where obtaining credit is as easy as it is, there’s probably no way to efficiently collect on delinquent accounts by writing real affidavits, filing legitimate, error-free lawsuits, and serving legitimate summonses in each and every individual case. Without the shortcuts, it doesn’t work. So techniques like robo-signing and sewer service are essential to the profitability of the business. Plenty of people—consumers and merchants both—are probably glad that so much credit is available, but they don’t realize that systematic fraud is part of what makes it available. Legally, there’s absolutely no difference between a woman on welfare who falsely declares that her boyfriend no longer lives in the home and a bank that uses a robo-signer to cook up a document swearing that he has kept regular records of your credit card account. But morally and politically, they’re worlds apart. When the state brings a fraud case against a welfare mom, it brings it with disgust, with rage, because in addition to committing the legal crime, she’s committed the political crime of being needy and an eyesore. Banks commit the legal crime of fraud wholesale; they do so out in the open, have entire departments committed to it, and have employees who’ve spent years literally doing nothing but commit, over and over again, the same legal crime that some welfare mothers go to jail for doing once. But they’re not charged, because there’s no political crime. The system is not disgusted by the organized, mechanized search for profit. It’s more like it’s impressed by it.
Matt Taibbi (The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap)
The R6 Resilience Change Management Framework is a cyclical framework that consists of six iterative puzzle pieces: 1. Review the Macro/Micro Changes: This iteration emphasizes the importance of scanning (mostly) the external environment to identify emerging trends, disruptions, and opportunities. By understanding the broader context in which the organization operates, leaders can anticipate future challenges and proactively adapt their strategies. There should never be a time in the organizations existence where it stops reviewing the macro changes. There are times, though, when micro changes (internal) are where the focus needs to be. 2. Reassess the Business’ Capabilities in the Context of Macro Changes: This iteration is fundamentally about “who are we, and how can we really add value?” It also involves a critical evaluation of the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in light of the identified macro changes. This reassessment helps to identify areas where the organization needs to adapt or transform its capabilities to remain competitive. This iteration is largely inward-looking, focused on the organization. But it tempered with the idea that “how do our capabilities allow us to add value to our customers lives (existing or new).” 3. Redefine Target Market(s) Based on Reassessment of Capabilities: This iteration focuses on aligning the organization's target markets with the evolving needs and preferences of customers, the changing competitive landscape, and the new reality of the businesses capabilities. This may involve identifying new customer segments, developing personalized offerings, creating seamless omnichannel experiences, or approaching the same target market in new ways (offering them new kinds of value, or the same kind of value in new ways). 4. Redirect Capabilities Toward Redefined Target Market: This iteration involves realigning the organization's resources, processes, and strategies to effectively serve the redefined target markets. This may require investments in new technologies, optimization of supply chains, or the development of innovative products and services. 5. Restructure the Organization: This iteration focuses on adapting the organization's structure, culture, and talent to support the desired changes. This may involve creating agile teams, fostering a culture of innovation, or empowering employees to make decisions through new policies. 6. Repeat in Perpetuity – or – Render Paradigm Shift [R6-RPS]: This iteration underscores the importance of continuous monitoring, evaluation, and adaptation. The R6 framework is not a one-time process in response to a change event, but an iterative cycle that enables organizations to remain agile and resilient in the face of ongoing change. Additionally, there are times when before repeating the cycle, a business may want/need to render an external paradigm shift by introducing a product or service or way of doing things that fundamentally changes the market – fundamentally changes the value exchange between customers, employees and organizations.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (GAME CHANGR6: An Executives Guide to Dominating Change, by applying the R6 Resilience Change Management Framework)
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship)
GET BEYOND THE ONE-MAN SHOW Great organizations are never one-man operations. There are 22 million licensed small businesses in America that have no employees. Forbes suggests 75 percent of all businesses operate with one person. And the average income of those companies is a sad $44,000. That’s not a business—that’s torture. That is a prison where you are both the warden and the prisoner. What makes a person start a business and then be the only person who works there? Are they committed to staying small? Or maybe an entrepreneur decides that because the talent pool is so poor, they can’t hire anyone who can do it as well as them, and they give up. My guess is the latter: Most people have just given up and said, “It’s easier if I just do it myself.” I know, because that’s what I did—and it was suicidal. Because my business was totally dependent on me and only me, I was barely able to survive, much less grow, for the first ten years. Instead I contracted another company to promote my seminars. When I hired just one person to assist me out of my home office, I thought I was so smart: Keep it small. Keep expenses low. Run a tight ship. Bigger isn’t always better. These were the things I told myself to justify not growing my business. I did this for years and even bragged about how well I was doing on my own. Then I started a second company with a partner, a consulting business that ran parallel to my seminar business. This consulting business quickly grew bigger than my first business because my partner hired people to work for us. But even then I resisted bringing other people into the company because I had this idea that I didn’t want the headaches and costs that come with managing people. My margins were monster when I had no employees, but I could never grow my revenue line without killing myself, and I have since learned that is where all my attention and effort should have gone. But with the efforts of one person and one contracted marketing company, I could expand only so much. I know that a lot of speakers and business gurus run their companies as one-man shows. Which means that while they are giving advice to others about how to grow a business, they may have never grown one themselves! Their one-man show is simply a guy or gal going out, collecting a fee, selling time and a few books. And when they are out speaking, the business terminates all activity. I started studying other people and companies that had made it big and discovered they all had lots of employees. The reality is you cannot have a great business if it’s just you. You need to add other people. If you don’t believe me, try to name one truly great business that is successful, ongoing, viable, and growing that doesn’t have many people making it happen. Good luck. Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and ultimately to get you where you want to go. Consider the behemoth online company Amazon: It has more than 220,000 employees. Apple has more than 100,000; Microsoft has around the same number. Ernst & Young has more than 200,000 people. Apple calls the employees working in its stores “Geniuses.” Don’t you want to hire employees deserving of that title too? Think of how powerful they could make your business.
Grant Cardone (Be Obsessed or Be Average)
Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)