3 Dumb Rules That Make Employees Less Productive | Inc.com

July 28, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Like a strict parent, a strict boss is probably motivated by love. You cherish the business you worked so hard for and you won’t let a little bit of grumbling among employees keep you from running a tight ship. Your team might not like the rules your lay down to keep them productive and on-task, but these guide rails mean your business runs smoothly and efficiently.

That might be the thinking of the control freak boss, but according to a recent LinkedIn Influencer post from author and President of TalentSmart Dr. Travis Bradberry, despite your good intentions, your strict rules are probably making your team less productive, not more.

“As my company has grown, so has our difficulty maintaining standards. There have been many instances where someone crossed a line, and we were tempted to respond with a new rule that applied to everyone. But that’s where most companies blow it,” he writes. “In just about every instance, upon closer inspection, we realized that establishing a new rule would be a passive and morale-killing way to address the problem. The vast majority of the time, the problem needs to be handled one-on-one by the employee’s manager.”

So what are the most common counter-productive rules from management that employees hate and which end up only reducing the amount they get done? Bradberry offers a long list, including:

Top 5 Most Common Errors in Small Business Employee Handbooks | SOOFI

July 28, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Employee Handbooks are an integral part of every small business’s “CYA” arsenal. They are intended to provide objective standards for employee conduct, expectations, and disciplinary procedures.

However, the overwhelming majority of small businesses tend to rely on publicly available online forms or policies borrowed from fellow business owners to prepare their employee handbooks, whether out of necessity, preference, or convenience.

In states like California where employment and labor laws are constantly being added or amended, it is worthwhile to review your company’s employee handbook from time to time to assess whether they are adequate or create unnecessary risk that, with a few tweaks and modifications, could be mitigated. Complying with labor laws is a lot like keeping good dental hygiene: an unpleasant and frequent annoyance but one for which an once of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure. Here is some guidance on the most common errors or mistakes in small business employee handbooks:

5 Gorgeous Hospitals That Show How Good Design Can Improve Patients’ Lives | Co.Exist

July 27, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve ever been wheeled into an ER room on a stretcher and spent hours staring at a windowless gray wall, you’re already aware that traditional hospitals haven’t exactly been designed to be comforting. But that’s changing. Forward-thinking hospitals are realizing that good design that improve patients’ mood can actually help people get well faster.

“In the past, the design of health care facilities was focused more on supporting the patient care team than the actual patient,” says Scott Habjan, associate director at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who served as jury chair for the recent AIA National Healthcare Design Awards. The winning designs all give patients more attention, based on research that shows the physical environment can help patients feel less stressed, take less pain medicine, and improve more quickly.

“Qualities like natural light, views to nature, and quiet and clean patient rooms all contribute to a positive patient experience,” Habjan says. “Planning that keeps caregivers closer to the patient and environments that give them a sense of control serve to support the healing process. Conversely, facilities designed without the patient in mind can be particularly stressful and depressing to someone already in a vulnerable state.”

Read about a few of the award winners to see examples of facilities thinking differently:

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Direct Investments | Axial

July 22, 2015 ~ CBPS ~ Leave a comment

As the number of family offices that pursue direct investments in private companies increases, so too do the number of misguided deals. Over the years we’ve heard plenty of examples from family offices where the direct investments they made were tremendously successes, but also where there were lessons to be learned. In the spirit of passing on that knowledge, we have compiled a few common mistakes made in direct investing

Holacracy, Explained: An Illustrated Guide to Management-Free Organizations | Page19

July 21, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Have you heard about Holacracy? If you’re watching the startup and tech scene, then there’s a pretty good chance you have.

Holacracy is a management-free way to run a company. It’s been around for a few years, but it may have come to your attention just recently when its inventor, Brian Robertson, released a book on the concept. Another place you might have recently heard about Holacracy is in the media when Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, asked his employees to either fully buy in to the company’s holacracy initiative or take their leave (along with a nice little bonus to sweeten the exit).

Even before all the media buzz, we at Blinkist were fascinated with Holacracy. In fact, it led us to develop our own, lighter approach called Blinkracy and roll it out through our team.

One thing that we noticed along the way is that there’s a huge breach between how simple and efficient Holacracy can make work and how not simple it is to understand. Holacracy is a beautiful concept that makes organizations more effective and much better places to work. However, the mass of holacracy-only lingo makes the adoption curve high.

10 Time Wasting Tasks You Can Automate in 30 Minutes | Small Biz Trends

July 20, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Time is one of the most precious assets to business owners. But with so many time wasting tasks on your to-do list, you need to take control of your work or it will take control of you. Luckily, technology can help.

Here are 10 common time wasting tasks to automate to free up time:

Sorting Emails

Before you get around to responding to emails, it helps to organize them. One of the best efficiency moves you can make is to use the label, tag and/or folder functions in your email program. That way, you can tackle important emails first, and less important ones later (or maybe never). It also helps you to “batch” emails for efficiency.

The Future Of Retail Won’t Be So Good For Consumers | TechCrunch

July 17, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Shopping — both online and offline — is a great luxury of the modern era. People can enjoy a great selection at lower prices and shop from the convenience of their home, while still having the option of going to a local mall or retailer to peruse the aisles for instant gratification.

But consumers can’t have their cake and eat it, too, and the retail world as we know it today can no longer give it to them.

Retail Will Change Forever

Technology is killing the traditional retailer. Victims will include those selling commodity brand-name-type products like consumer electronics, appliances, sporting equipment and furniture, and may even include those selling consumable goods.

Price wars, combined with technology shifts, will eliminate national, regional and local competitors who just can’t keep up. Many of today’s vendors will cease to exist as online shopping takes larger shares of all sorts of markets. Just look at the trends in companies like Best Buy, Staples, Radio Shack and Sears.

Student Loans Stunting Small Business Growth | Business News Daily

July 17, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Student loans aren’t just negatively impacting you financially; they’re also hurting your chances of starting a new business, research finds.

Entrepreneurship is significantly hampered in parts of the country where residents carry more student loan debt, according to a recently updated study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

For the study, student loan debt across the United States was analyzed by county and compared with small business creation in those areas. Researchers discovered that between 2000 and 2010 a one standard deviation increase in student debt reduced small businesses in those counties by an average of 14 percent.

Resetting and How It Can Help You Achieve Better Results | Getentrepreneurial

July 16, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

During a recent conversation about all that I try to juggle, a friend suggested I might want to embrace resetting as a regular practice. This was after I belted out a list of the roles which were important for me to not only to play, but to also be darn good at (!): a present Mom, impactful Coach, thriving Business Owner, attentive Wife, Daughter, Friend, etc. etc. etc. Whew! Makes me exhausted just thinking about all I sometimes try to do.

A quick look in the dictionary told me that one definition of “reset” is “to change the reading of” like a clock. I could go for that. Pausing, taking stock, breathing deeply, and then determining the “right” next step also seem a propos to me. Indeed, with these descriptors and given what I was trying to achieve, I could clearly see how resetting could be my ally.

Later that day, I went to a yoga class where the theme was, guess what? Resetting. Resetting the placement of my feet on the yoga mat so as to have a firm foundation. Hmmm, resetting and a firm foundation. So, does that mean that not taking the time to reset would cause my footing to be unsure? It would seem so.

Given the conversation I had just had with my friend an hour earlier, I couldn’t help but make the connection between my postural repositioning and my friend’s suggestion of resetting throughout my daily challenges. Not allowing the time it takes to reset, from the ground up, the flow of my daily life and the place of all the people in it leads to a lot of needless stumbling.

7 Content Marketing Misconceptions CMOs Are Tired of Hearing | All Business

July 15, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Content marketing is enjoying a nice stay of popularity as one of the most useful online marketing strategies of the modern era. It’s been adopted by small and large businesses of all kinds of industries, and marketers continue to scale up — in fact, 70 percent of B2B marketers are producing more content than they were a year ago.

By this point, most people have heard of content marketing, even if they don’t understand it, and as you might imagine, the misconceptions surrounding the strategy are rampant.

CMOs and other marketing experts immersed in the world of content marketing are tired of hearing these widespread misconceptions — and it’s worth your while to know why they aren’t true: