Entrepreneurship Tips

These questions are in no particular order, as they should be customized to the particular position and person.  You want to mix up the tougher ones with more social, calming questions, so people do not feel they are getting the first degree.  Always do your questions first and theirs second, by saying upfront you have some questions first and then will answer any questions they have later. This way they cannot sell specifically to your needs. You are in charge and should control the first interview completely. Only after they have proven that they are a viable candidate should you start...

With unemployment levels high today, many people are focusing on specific industry and domain experience with the idea that a large pool of candidates means they can write a very detailed list of experience and still get good candidates. This tends to create a process that ignores the overall quality and ability of the candidates in favor of a simple checklist of very specific experience. A person's broad experience, attitude, abilities, intelligence, work ethic, and other factors are much more important by a factor of ten for most managers and senior executives. The truth is that a high-quality executive can...

The Bigger Picture Annual Planning Process Hopefully, you have already read my article or book chapter on Management By Objective and learned about managing individuals and departments to monthly goals. If you have not it is recommended, but not required, to understand this piece. This chapter is really the next level “up” in terms of developing a more strategic annual plan.  It is no so much about deciding where the business will go; that should be part of the vision process and already known. It is about setting the milestones to be achieved in a particular year.  I recommend a simple and...

Adjusting Your Management Style To Your Company's Stage, A miniseries on practical leadership focus for start-ups and emerging growth company senior executives. This series will explore how leadership focus and skills must evolve as a company grows from a raw startup to an expansion stage, successful enterprise.  Most seminars, texts, and articles talk about leadership generically as if it had the same requirements in all situations. It does not, and in fact, the key elements of success at each stage of a company's development are always very different. Leadership is a skill that is hard to develop, but usually easy...

Strategic Planning - Not Just For Fortune 2000 Companies Generally, if you have more than about a dozen people in your company, you need to have an annual strategic planning process.  With a small management team of three or four people, it is not very difficult, and will likely go quickly because you discuss these things daily.  The trick is to look at the longer-term (at least a year out, preferably three years) in the context of a 3 to 5 year vision for the company.  As the company gets bigger the time invested will get bigger too, but either...