Month: October 2015

  • Do you have these two broken mindsets about your employees?

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    This month we’ve talked a bunch about running a business with employees. From listening, to mentoring, to rewarding them a lot of ground has been covered. What I want to talk about today is the broken mindset so many business owners have. They view employee mentoring, training as a business expense not as an investment.…

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  • Do you think about employees in a broken way?

    Do you think about employees in a broken way?

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    This month we’ve talked about investing in your employees. From dealing with employee failure to how you reward them, how your best people may be hindering innovation in your company and mentoring the people you have working for you or getting them mentored by their peers. If that seems like a lot of work, you’re…

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  • Is money the best reward for a job well done?

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    Rewards are awesome. When my oldest daughter behaves well and does her chores and earns something like a new set of Lego she’s ecstatic. She’s also pretty happy for some nice shiny loonies (that’s Canadian for a $1 coin). But talk to her later in the month and the thing she actually remembers earning is…

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  • A Scary $100K Mistake on Your First Day

    A Scary $100K Mistake on Your First Day

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    I’ve got a friend who, on the first day of his new job, cost his company $100,000. He worked for an airplane refitting company and the story goes that he was told to compact some garbage. As he gathered garbage for compacting, one box in the refuse seemed odd to him so he asked someone…

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  • Mentoring your employees…how?

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    On Tuesday I talked about promoting your best innovators and then the fact that many of them turn themselves in to the sole innovators. They figure that they’re always going to be the best at new ideas so they don’t listen to their team. But it’s not just employees that do this. Business owners do…

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  • Have your best people started ruining your innovation?

    Have your best people started ruining your innovation?

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    We have a problem in many organizations, which is managers and business owners believing they have the best ideas and are the only source of innovation for the company. On the surface, it seems to make sense that the people at the top would drive innovation. After all, many of these people rose through the…

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  • What does listening to your employees look like?

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    Years ago I worked at a company that talked big about valuing the ideas of their employees. They’d set up meetings or call you in to the office to ask for a feedback on which products to purchase or on how the sales floor should be laid out. Really all that consultation was really just…

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  • Staying in shape as a desk jockey

    Staying in shape as a desk jockey

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    After the great discussion on family first on WP Tavern, along with Cory Miller talking openly about mental health I decided it’s time to write about how fitness and my work as a developer/business owner/desk jockey meld in my life. Exercise and Mental Health Did you know that exercising can help you feel happier? Not…

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  • Play the big game with your life sentence

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    People playing a big game don’t have time for a small game – Dan Sullivan Dan talks about this in reference to people you see name calling and back biting and diving in to guilt. Their game is so small that it includes these things. If you’re playing a bigger game then these things don’t…

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  • Giving freedom to employees

    Giving freedom to employees

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    Have you ever been disappointed by an employee? Don’t have employees? How about a friend or spouse — have they disappointed you? Has an employee, or a helper, said they’d do something for you but then just not done it the right way? Yup, that’s totally frustrating, but in spite of your expectations, you should…

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