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As a business owner, you know what it’s like to lie awake at 2 a.m. Maybe it has happened when you are excited and full of new ideas for your business. More often, it’s because you are worried about issues you will face the next day. Sometimes, it’s because you just woke up with the solution to a problem. I’ve experienced all those emotions about my businesses over the years. Awake at 2 o’clock? is where I share them with you, and hopefully help with answers that will let you sleep.
John F. Dini, CExP, CEPA
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Small business owners are the Hunters of the 21st century. We are 3% of the US population, and yet we create over half of all American jobs. As Hunters, we may not be inclined to manage by the numbers or stick to systems. Are you a Hunter or a Farmer?
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How prepared are you to exit your company?
The Assessment breaks down the four major categories of exit readiness; Finance, Planning, Operations and Revenue/Profit.
Tag Archives: hiring
Few Employees Can Go the Distance
It’s been an unusual week. I’ve had at least four coaching conversations about employees whose jobs have outgrown them. On the one hand, it’s good news. It means that the companies are growing. On the other hand, it’s always tough … Continue reading
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Minimum Wage and the Middle Class
“Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions.” – Alexis De Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1831) Americans have always considered themselves “middle … Continue reading
One Response to Minimum Wage and the Middle Class
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The only real way to solve the problem of the shrinking middle class is through technological advances and higher levels of universal education. Governments at all levels have failed to provide the education required and continue to take more money away from the private sector. Money that could be used to develop new technologies and train their workers to move into higher paying jobs. They are taking actions to get the political support of those who cannot, or choose not to, understand that their simplistic approaches will fail. The envy of astronomically higher salaries of CEO’s are playing right into their political strategies that are definitely not “for the people”.
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The Extinction of the Summer Job
I’ve read several articles of late discussing the decline in the number of older high school and college students that take jobs for the summer. Each of these reflected on how summer employment taught millions of Americans their first work habits. Around … Continue reading
2 Responses to The Extinction of the Summer Job
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Hi John,
Whoa, this describes the situation exactly (except I don’t know of any “middle class” folks that can afford summers in Europe)! As Chief Moderator at BizSugar, I feel your article hits home to small business owners the fact that most young people — not millennials, but generation Z, those who are about ages 15 through about 18–will be entering the job market with far, far less practical experience than even the millennials, let alone Gen X or the boomers, and this message may really deter them from giving these young folks a chance. As minimum wage jobs go up to provide underemployed adults with a means of providing for their families, perhaps it’s a good idea for small business owners to re-create those summer jobs of the past, by hiring a kid to scan some documents, run errands, do a little of this and of that and above all, get used to talking to customers and dealing with people. As a parent, I’d like to see this, but from the SMB’s perspective, they might not have the extra cash lying around after they pay the grownups.
Hmm….food for thought.
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You Can Go This Far, but No Further
When someone starts their first company (especially a technician as defined in my book Hunting in a Farmer’s World) he or she is usually the sole key employee. She (I’ll use one pronoun for readability) does the hands-on work of … Continue reading
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Where are All Those Jobseekers?
Workers: There are currently 5.1 million job openings in the US; an all time high. While the official unemployment stands at 5.5%, the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes people working as little as one hour a week for “economic reasons” … Continue reading
10 Responses to Where are All Those Jobseekers?
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Glad to see you’ve made the last turn, John. Best wishes!
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John,
So so glad to hear that you are feeling better!
While agree with everything you said in the your this post, I’d like to extend your metaphor of the blindfolded people bumping the room. You and they found the elephant in the room and describe it from one limited perspective.
Yes, education systems are a mess, but that is but one cause. There are many. Here’s another which helps to, but does not wholly explain, our current employment situation. Business has a tremendous responsibility for the state of affairs – the lack of skilled employees. How did the boomers get trained for manufacturing jobs, construction jobs, and other “manual” labor jobs?
Businesses (and often unions) took responsibility for training workers. Starting in the 80s and continuing to today, the emphasis on corporate profit, just-in-time and lean labor forces, caused otherwise repsonsible businesses (and unions) to stop investing in training and cross training.
Today we hear from 10s of business owners hoping to find skilled labor to replace their retiring workforces. Guess what… no one trained them. And to me the chief responsibility for that falls on the people who profit from having trained labor. Stockholders.
Just another reason, I believe, we find ourselves in a pickle. There is a good solution though. Hire for aptitude and invest in your employees.
Keep getting well. Chuck
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Hello John,
I did not know that you had a health problem. Congratulations on your recovery.The college mess is getting worse. Cheap money has enabled colleges to embark on an expansion war, turning campuses into resorts. In Colorado, CU and CSU both have debt approaching $1 Billion. CSU is committed to a $250 million football stadium that the President thinks will elevate the mediocre RAMs from the Mountain West to Big 10/Big 12 status – and consequently boost foreign student enrollment to pay off the bond! (I have to check to see if CSU has an Economics department.) We have let on-line “colleges” entice veterans to spend their GI loans on courses that do not equip them to get employment.
The colleges will not change a lucrative business model. Change will only come when parents stop believing that their sons and daughters deserve the college “experience” they enjoyed or dreamed of. That experience degraded from education to the high life in the 90s when colleges began to be rated for their partying credentials. Parents need to take a hard nosed approach to college selection, and counsel their children against taking on debt without a high probability of quick repayment.
Another solution would be for student loans to be limited to only fund attendance at colleges that have a 50% or greater 4 year graduation rate, and an adequate record of graduate employment three years after graduation. Similarly, GI loans could only be spent on productive on-line courses. Money rules, and we would quickly see colleges actually focus on graduation and employment success.
Regards,
David Cunningham. -
Pleased to read that you are on the mend.
“Ridiculed as the refuge for dumb kids and criminals, manual arts, auto shop, home economics and other non-college preparatory classes were virtually extinguished from high school curriculums”[sic] is not universally factual. While the emphasis on college attendance is enormous, the emphasis on STEM oriented programs and the undervaluation of liberal arts is also to blame. Combined with the nonsensical new testing, the result leaves a diminished effectiveness in the new workforce.
Now layer on HR & owner bias against anyone out of work over one year and you have the genesis for the statistics you report in your article.
This emphasis toward STEM and standardized testing has another painful consequence: critical thinking capability is nonexistent in high school graduates. Do you agree this may be a contributing factor in the reduction in 4-year college graduations?
Our regional high school has a thriving poly-tech program. This is a school with an excess of three thousand students. And yes, counselors get bonuses for the number of students who take AP and honors courses, and likely something similar for the number of grads who attend college. But the vocational training program is excellent and very much in demand.
Lastly I believe this bullet was an oversight: “Fueled by student debt, colleges increased their costs at almost triple the rate of inflation.”… isn’t the equation the other way around? The debt is a by-product of the rising costs to attend college.
And what will happen when the college bubble bursts… the current rate of tuition increases and incurred debt levels in many colleges and universities cannot be sustained. When will be start seeing colleges folding? It may not be very far into the future.
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John — good to hear that you are doing better.
Walter
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As many states, such as my state of FL, are seeking to do away with traditional student testing, more and more students will qualify for college entrance without a clue. High School
counselors need to do more to assess students and work with them and their parents to develop a plan for their continued education. Goal setting and planning need to be a major part of their education.
Other factors beside $ growth can impact “key employee” status. Among them are supervising a business when it starts multiple locations…which often occurs in businesses under 5 million….
The owner should definitely consider this when hiring and selecting people for development, or they will have telling problems in achieving planned growth.