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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: management
Lots of Jobs – Where are the Workers?
The South Texas region has an unemployment rate of somewhere between 5.2% and 5.8%, depending on exactly where you are located. Employment in certain highly desirable professional technology occupations is officially over 100%. Finding entry-level employees in South Texas is … Continue reading
8 Responses to Lots of Jobs – Where are the Workers?
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“We’ll Just Agree to Disagree”
A CEO was having a discussion with one of his top executives a few weeks ago. He felt strongly that the executive needed to take a certain course of action as soon as possible. The Vice President explained that the … Continue reading
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After the Goal
Why do employees have to “rest” after accomplishing a goal? When most human accomplishment required manual labor, taking time to recuperate after a final push, whether it was harvesting a crop or completing a building, was a natural way to physically recharge before starting another project. Today, most … Continue reading
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What is Mentoring?
In a recent meeting of one of our groups in The Alternative Board®, the business owners discussed mentoring. One member, a partner in a large professional firm, has been tasked with mentoring a partner in training. He asked what the … Continue reading
4 Responses to What is Mentoring?
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I would argue that coaching and teaching are part of mentoring when there is a strategic goal of developing an employee. We have a small software company. Since not long after PEI was founded in 1996, we have had a Service Item set up in QuickBooks called “Mentoring”. It is used in many contexts.
When an employee is assigned a project that requires new skills and I assist, my time is marked as Mentoring / Non-billable and their time is booked to the client project (billable or not). When I have to coach or teach a new skill that is booked to Mentoring. If I review internal work that an employee did (company website or whatever) and then discuss different techniques or strategy than they applied, that is Mentoring. However, the review process or asking them to fix something goes to Administration or Marketing or whatever normal business process is involved.
It may be correct that if an employee is simply shown who to complete a specific task so that they can perform that duty, you might call that “merely” teaching. When efforts are part of a long-term strategic goal to develop an employee into something more than a cog in the machine, then the deliberate work to accomplish the goal is legitimately mentoring.
David Basri
Point Enterprises, Inc.
http://www.pointent.com-
David, the idea to capture a mentoring role as a ‘job cost’ data point is an interesting one. We capture management consulting with our clients, which falls under mentoring with the teaching and coaching dynamic as discussed. With my own company staff I have not captured that in any way. Thanks for the eye opener!
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I have experienced all the three levels of “learning” with a person: I am mentored in a public speaking club. I have a direct and personal relationship with my mentor. She was my choice from the start. I felt that we clicked and I feel comfortable with her. She teaches me things in a focused and condensed way: all about public speaking and how to convey my message to an audience. My lessons are small assignments in the form of a speech formed in such a way for me to learn important elements of a successful speech but one at a time.
However, I think a trainer is teaching you something much more specific rather than a mentor which connects elements from different lessons and goes a second level. The sessions can be more relaxed and a bit generalized though having one special assignment due to the varied topic of the speech and the many objectives that need to be met.
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Off-topic: I have just noticed the name of the blog is awake at two o’clock. It is 2.15 AM.
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Customer Service Starts with “Hello.”
When asked what differentiates their businesses from giant competitors, most owners will describe their relationship with customers. “We give better service.” “Our employees know our customers by name.” “We treat people as individuals.” What constitutes excellent service differs by industry … Continue reading
One Response to Customer Service Starts with “Hello.”
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Great article and so true!
John,
Interesting article, same sort of thing is happening in the UK. Check this book out as it sheds some light on the issue: The case for working with your hands by Mathew Crawford.
This has been happening in Australia for a while John. We have the whole new situation of rising unemployment combined with increasing skills shortages. The new catch cry is that we are ‘warehousing’ our youth in educational facilities that don’t produce workforce-ready employees. To make it worse, out minimum wages here are US $16.37 an hour. Plug that into the payroll of a USA small business and see what happens!!!
Unfortunately, businesses will have to look outside their country and possibly bring in entry level employees. As a small business, you have to find the way to get the work done and this can be accomplished with H-2B Visas, a Visa that was scarce in 2007 when the U.S. had a boom. Large companies have always relied on these Visas, now small businesses are also taking advantage of them. We hate to have to hire outside our country, but, when a business cant find the workers in the U.S., they have no choice.
The Colleges and Universities have an extreme disconnect with the business world. We are looking for programmers and the schools are investing 4 years in these students and they still don’t have the skills. It still takes us 6-12 months of training before they are ready to work on their own. I could probably take an average Joe with no experience and invest a little over 12 months and be in the same position. It is a shame.
You can add this one to your anecdotes, we have been trying to get “decent” workers to offset H2B visa workers. We scaled down to decent as we love to have experienced workers, due to the lack of applicants able to pass a drug screening test or background test. Of all efforts of posting available positions in the “decent” category, we were able to interview 10, hire 6, of which 3 showed for first day of work.
For those of us with children in college, this is a fairly depressing realization. I am not surprised by it. I think that the writing is on the wall. Even Harvard is now offering deals to incoming students because it is getting harder and harder to determine if the price of higher education is really going to pay off in the end. For now, I am hopeful that engineering majors will remain in high demand… somewhere beyond MacDonalds.
Lastly, I read John Dini’s recent post about the challenges SMBs in Texas are having filling jobs in areas like construction and manufacturing. His assumption is it’s because there are too many people with degrees in Psychology and an insufficient number of technically trained people to fill these positions. No where in his, or your, posts do you consider what all emerging middle class societies experience- young people don’t want to perform menial jobs. Our youth are growing up with technologies and conveniences our parents thought was the stuff of science fiction.
I have to contest your response John, unless you replace “menial” with “manual.” I agree that younger folks have little attraction to working in noisy, dirty, hot or cold environments, but I wouldn’t characterize a master electrician’s, plumber’s or machinist’s six-figure income as menial.