Posted by admin on November 30th, 2009
Of late, the topic of succession planning has sparked much concern. However, it seems few organizations have heeded the warning. According to a Human Resource Planning Society and Hewitt Associates study, fewer than 60% of companies have a succession plan in place.
Below are some of the most common myths about succession planning.
Myth #1: If there are no imminent retirements, succession planning needn’t be a top priority.
According to a survey conducted by Capital H, nearly 22 percent of respondents expect to lose between 10 percent and 25 percent of their top performers to retirement within the next five years. These top performers play a significant role in a company’s success, often serving in high-level, supervisory roles. For successions to progress smoothly, the people chosen to fill these roles need to be prepared and adequately trained. That process takes time.
Myth #2: Succession planning is only an issue for big companies.
85 to 95 percent of all the companies in the United States today — more than 10 million – are family-owned or family-controlled. The smaller the business, the greater the impact is felt from a replaced employee. This is especially true of any employee succession in a sales or operations leadership role, as a poor month or two can mean disaster for a small company. Small companies need to plan early and invest in the training necessary to help the new or promoted employee succeed. For smaller companies, this may mean researching outside learning opportunities and setting aside a budget to cover them.
Myth #3: There need only be a succession plan for C-level team members.
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Posted by admin on November 29th, 2009
For many people, having a home business would be something really attractive. To be your own boss, to not having to commute, to choose the working hours freely and to be able to plan the work-day entirely on your own.
If you are considering starting your own home based business, then you could start with thinking it through, by asking yourself some initial questions, such as:
1. If I’m going to keep my current job, at least as a starter, when will I find the time to build my home based business? How many hours each day can I put aside and use to my business endeavours? Can I work early in the morning or at the late evenings? Maybe at the weekends?
2. Do I have a suitable room or place for my home business? Can I work uninterrupted? And, would my neighbours also feel uninterrupted?
3. How much energy and determination am I willing to put into learning something new, if required? Even if the basic direction of my home based business is something that I already know of and master, then: How about the management of the home business itself? Should I delegate some or any chores, like the book-keeping?
4. Do I know how to market my home based business, in order to get people aware of that they can buy something from me? Should I use online- or offline marketing, or both maybe? How much money and or time do I need to put aside for marketing efforts alone? What is the most effective way for me to market my home business, within my particular economical frames? If I plan to do this myself, could I learn something that would make it easier and more effective?
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Posted by admin on November 28th, 2009
Nobody benefits when profit is eliminated from the economic equation.
With the economy on the mend, a lot of people in the material handling industry are expecting good times without having to make any changes in the way they do business. Unfortunately, that means the continuation of one particular practice that played a major role in getting the economy in trouble a few years back.
When the “dot.coms” were flying high, they experienced rapid growth by the simple method of offering impossibly low prices and constant expansion into markets about which they knew nothing. They operated at a loss for years on end, promising investors that it would all turn around when they had achieved sufficient market share. Eventually, of course, this “lose a little on each deal but make it up in volume” business model blew up in their faces. The balloons popped, one by one, and the economy followed them down the tube.
In the material handling industry, this discredited business model is still very much in evidence. Too many companies have played the merger game, getting themselves involved in markets that they know nothing about. Too many have played the numbers game, moving money from one pocket to another to make themselves look good for one more quarter (this is called managing for stockholder value), totally forgetting about long-range planning.
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Posted by admin on November 27th, 2009
Every year millions of people answer “Yes” to that question and every year that answer costs many of them money, time, confidence, and heartbreak. The Small Business Administration estimates there are 580,900 new small businesses opening each year and that number does not include the small one-person entrepreneurships that pop up every day. However even if you are your business’s sole employee then there is still something to be learned from the SBA’s numbers.
According to the SBA, two-thirds of new businesses survive at least two years and 44 percent survive at least four years. Two of the key factors in the businesses survival and ability to thrive: the owner’s education level and the owner’s reason for starting the firm in the first place.
How can you make sure that you are among the winners rather than the losers in this high stakes game? The answer is inside of you. You must ask yourself four key questions to determine whether your own small business will survive and thrive.
1. Are You Ready
Have you mentally prepared yourself for the switch from employee (or student or whatever label fits you currently) to boss. You are going to be the one making decisions now about everything from office products to product line. This total control is one of the driving forces behind many people who take the plunge into starting their ownbusiness but it is also one of the elements that drives new entreprenurs crazy. When you start out there is an endless list of decisions that need to be made and new questions crop up every day.
Even more important you will need to remember that in a small business you will wear many hats. Even if you manage to start out with one or more employees you will each fulfill more than one role in your new business. And if you are running a one-man or one-woman show then you serve in every capacity from file clerk to maintenance crew to salesman to CEO. Can you handle switching from task to task and role to role like that? Are you willing to make those switches?
Similarly, have you prepared your family and friends for this switch in attitude. Your life is going to change — probably pretty drastically — and that change can have a positive or negative impact on your family life and social interactions. It will make things much easier if your friends and family are supportive going into the process.
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