I once had a client who owned an auto repair business. He was a very good mechanic and worked on cars all the time. You could often find several cars and trucks in his backyard waiting to be worked on. As his family grew, his wife wanted the vehicles out of the yard. His solution was to start a business and open a shop of his own. He called me because his banker was asking him for accurate financial statements. He would work twelve hours a day under the hood of a car and then spend a half hour every other day trying to get caught up on his book work. I would visit him every week on a specific day, let’s say Tuesday, for ninety minutes. During our initial conversations—actually all the time we worked together—he would give me grief that I wore a white shirt. “As you know,” he would say, “anyone who wears a white shirt all the time definitely is not working.” He would wear the typical blue and gray striped mechanic’s shirt covered with grease and dirt stains. Often times when I first came to work with him, he did nothing but shop work from […]

In the post-pandemic area several of my clients are finding it more difficult to get employees in the door, and that puts pressure on the current employees who must “tow the load.”  The Boss is having to ask his employees to work longer hours and to work at multiple jobs due to the open positions.   Recently, I received a call from The Boss.  He is a young entrepreneur with small children and a newborn at home.  He called to vent regarding the long hours and the lack of people to do the work.  This Boss had been working too many hours, not getting enough sleep, and missing quality time with this family.  The Boss was asking his family to pick up the slack at home because he was exhausted from working all those hours.  He was also feeling guilty because of this family situation and that also played poorly on The Boss’s demeanor.     I asked The Boss what he would do if he could go home right now, lock the doors, and leave.  He said he would buy his wife some flowers and go home, hold his newborn, and take his wife to dinner.  I said, “Do it!”  I don’t mean every day, but when the frustration peaks, […]

Recently, while working with a client, I had the opportunity to lunch with two business owners from Europe. We began with casual conversations, and I was impressed with their understanding of our NFL football teams. Eventually, our conversation turned to business and the similar challenges we all experienced. The most interesting subject was people. It didn’t matter what continent we were on; people offered the greatest challenges. More specifically, we agreed we each had good workers and decent managers but were lacking enough leaders to go around. Some questions we discussed were: Is leadership taught or is it innate in an individual? We discussed personal growth plans and what types of training newer leaders needed. We discussed the benefit of giving candidates for leadership the opportunity to lead before being promoted into a leadership position. Will people like this person as their leader? Will they follow this person? Will employees trust this person as their leader? Great questions that needed to be answered prior to promoting a person. By this time in the meal, I think we were more interested in what we were discussing than the food. Those who know me will find that hard to believe! We discussed the […]

With the fishing season upon us, I thought of writing this newsletter about fishing guides. Therefore, this newsletter is not for The Boss but for you! When you decide to hire a fishing guide, you pick a guide with years of experience and someone who knows the waters you are going to fish. She knows the various lures that you should use and will share with you some of her best techniques so you can catch that trophy fish of your dreams. As a novice angler, you are eager to learn from your guide and therefore you ask many questions about the proper rod and real, the best way to rig your line, and you are eager to learn how to read the fish locator. You are attentive and heed every word your guide says. At the end of the day, you and your fishing guide have a mutual goal, your success on the water. Now imagine your first week at your new job. You have sought out a company in an industry you think you might like. Your goal is to do a good job and maybe advance in the company to earn a better wage than you earn […]

I met with The Boss today and discussed the challenges businesses are facing with their workforce and what to do about it.  We talked about how the economic conditions of the early 2000’s forced business to reinvent and adapt their business models back then.  We remembered when The Boss had to change the business model again when customers forced businesses to create an on-line presence and sell using the web.  Today, our workforce has challenged businesses to change and adapt the business model. The Boss is realizing the younger workforce of today has different values and expectations verses the older workforce of yesteryear. Back in the day, when us older folk first got into business, the workforce we managed came to work Monday through Friday and put in the normal 40-hour work week, had a cubical or desk, and if they were senior associates, had the weekends off.  Today The Boss must manage a workforce, which is made up of several generations, each of which has quite different opinions and attitudes about work life balance and what accountability should look like. The main discussion revolved around, not having enough people to field a workforce team!  Today, The Boss must employ […]

I was reviewing the monthly financials with The Boss in advance of sending them to his banker, one of the services I offer is coaching The Boss how to manage a banking relationship.  I was challenging The Boss with a few questions regarding the change in his backlog.  The backlog for the previous month was close to a million dollars and now for this month it is next to nothing, and the revenues did not reflect the million dollars in sales.  We took a step back to analyze why and search out the root cause of the miss-information.  Come to find out the production manager, who was only a few months out of the field and now in a management position, had made an error when estimating the backlog. It didn’t take long to determine that the production manager was never taught how to calculate the backlog.  Fortunately, in this case, we caught the error and adjusted the information prior to sending the financials to The Boss’s bank. After we found the problem, The Boss and I had a few conversations about how to fix the situation so it did not reoccur. What I explained to The Boss, who was […]

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There are times when I first engage with a business that I realize the business model that has worked for many years is broken for whatever reason and my goal is to work with The Boss to repair or “fix” their long-standing business model.  As I begin to work with The Boss to assess the challenges of the organization, I often find myself working closely with the key employees of the organization. As we begin our work together, it becomes apparent what needs to be improved and what is working well. Often, I come to this assessment through the insight of the key employees.  In short, the answers to the problems the business is experiencing are often offered up to me by these seasoned employees. Why then does The Boss not know how to fix the problems? Once the business model is broken and The Boss cannot fix it himself or herself, they may become frustrated because The Boss feels they should have all the answers, it’s their business after all.  The real answer lies in poor communications and The Boss has not engaged these key employees, who are the “subject matter experts”, to help to solve the issues. Ever-so-often […]

In a recent manager’s meeting I attended, there was a discussion regarding a poor performing employee who was disrupting co-workers and exemplifying very poor customer service.  The Boss’s initial knee-jerk reaction he said, “Fire her!”. The employee’s supervising manager was lobbying The Boss to keep her on duty until he could hire a replacement to take her place.  This is a service business already operating in an understaffed position due to a low unemployment environment and lack of qualified applicants. A position that most employers are experiencing in today’s economy.  As I listened to the discussion, I began to hear The Boss’s position change as he was being sawed by the supervising manager. After a while, I began to ask a few questions to get their attention.  What does it cost to lose a customer? How hard is it to gain a new customer?  We already know how challenging it is to find good workers in today’s world. I continued, in my experience when a company retains a bad employee, it is hard for the very good employees to justify staying with the company.  The good employees leave not because they cannot do the job, they leave because they do […]