Small businesses rely heavily on maintaining a good cash flow and having their clients pay on time. When a majority of small businesses are dealing with checks written against insufficient funds, that is indeed bad news for small businesses everywhere. Recent studies have shown that small, medium and large companies have had many bounced checks

Implementing new work techniques, strategies, or management systems in business organizations is often a daunting task for managers, as employees usually resist change. This is a fact acknowledged by several modern management theories. As such, any business organization that is planning to deploy Six Sigma needs to concentrate on building an effect

You may wonder why you need to develop soft skills when you have verifiable educational credentials and technical skills that make you an expert in your field. You only have to revisit the current job market scenario to understand the 'why' of this issue. As you dig deeper, you will understand why soft skills are so important! Top Reasons Why Y

For business owners, executive team members, managers, and supervisors there is no more important activity than delegation. As a manager, it is your job is to get work done through others. Delegating work to others is a High Payoff Activity. Therefore, being able to effectively delegate is essential to productivity and the operation of your bus

Meetings are one of the most vital elements of any business, so getting the most out of meetings is of great value. So many people quote boring, unproductive meetings as being a 'waste of time', that some sense of it all is needed. Managing meetings effectively will help you make the best use of yours and everyone else's time, whilst acknowledgi

Native English-speakers are exhorted to learn foreign languages to play a more effective role in globalisation—and failing miserably. There are good reasons for this. Whilst these factors explain why so few anglophones are multi-lingual, they are not valid excuses for not learning other languages when the situation calls for it. This article offers

You probably have a general idea of what a "negative" person is... but, in my experience, there are broadly two types: The first type is the OBVIOUSLY negative person - they're constantly whining and complaining about everything. They're actually fairly easy to cope with because if you can't avoid them altogether you can at least "switch off" w

I believe there are two things that will make a small business successful, but there are 3 things that need to be done in business. And as an online business owner, I know it's often easier to do the one thing that doesn't have to be done and unconsciously avoid the two things that make businesses successful. The first one is marketing: You shou

If you manage people for any length of time, it's likely that, at some stage, you'll need to let one or more people go. It might be because they aren't performing to your expectations; because you no longer need their role performed; or because they've breached the law or a company policy. Whatever the circumstances, firing or retrenching som

What is a great presentation? As you might have already seen on the Internet, or read in books, there are many definitions of great presentations. Nevertheless, they all emphasize one point - a great presentation is one which, ideally speaking, completely holds an audience enthralled. It is not entirely true that only great personalities can give g

So you have heard your manager say, "Time is Money"! You may have noticed he was extremely stressed when the department was toured; he viewed his employee time sheets and took a pencil to project costs. Managing time and money is a necessity for any executive. They often have no viable way to track project overruns before it's too late. This manag

When life begins to become hectic you can feel as if you are spinning out of control as you try to over extend yourself in a hundred different directions to get a grip. Finances, employees, shipments, merchandise issues, the line of what is involved and what can go wrong in business continues on and on. When one thing goes wrong it can seem that th

In the beginning of your business the freshness of the experience makes everything exciting and new. You are learning and putting new skills to work. All of this is what provides drive and focus for pursuing your business goals. As your business has been running for a longer period of time, it becomes the daily grind. You get up, go to work, do eve

People skills, you either have them or you don't. True - up to a point. Some managers are great at getting from their people exactly what is vital and important in others, well, let's say, less so. Still, for all there is hope to make progress, by focusing on some key points to build your business quickly and effectively, just by knowing better

Every business has problems. That is why the average life span of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time. Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the problem. The problem is an embarrassment tha