Browse published articles attributed to Tom Bordon, with full-archive search.
These days, selling a business requires as much planning as starting it. After all, you spend a great deal of your precious money and time on setting up a business; and obviously, you would not like to sell it for a loss. Not surprisingly, experts say it takes a business owner a minimum of 5 years time to implement a successful exit plan strategy.
Companies, big, medium, small or startups, have one thing in common – try as hard as they might, they can be, at any point of time, get hit by a crisis. The crisis or problem can strike at any time, in any form – be it product-related, financial, human resource, public relations, legal, market driven or internal.
One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs, managers and business owners face is retaining good employees and curbing employee disengagement. As the CEO, you may be banking on some of your high performing team members to achieve certain targets, only to find to your dismay their resignation letters on your table one fine morning. Resignations are rarely spur of the moment decisions. The employee reaches this decision after much thought. If you are an alert CEO or manager, you will be able to spot the signs of disengagement early and take remedial steps.
These days a growing number of people are joining CEO peer groups in the hope of getting insight and expertise of other CEOs that can help them tackle crucial business and strategic management issues and make their organizations more successful and productive. However it is extremely important to join the right CEO group which will be suitable for your needs. A wrong CEO conference is a sheer waste of your precious time and money. Here are few tips to help you choose the right CEO group: A CEO peer group must boast of varied expertise
You must have heard of the phrase, 'It is lonely at the top'. Well, this phrase holds so true for CEOs and other top ranking people of an organization. When you own a business it is highly unlikely that you will share your fears or challenges in front of your employees. And even if you do so, it is unlikely that your employees will provide you with genuine suggestions. This leads to frustration where you desperately search for guidance over your business strategies and decision making process.
“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.” Ronald Reagan An entrepreneurial CEO is responsible for ensuring smooth progress of everything from the marketing to finance, along with creating the end product. For achieving this Herculean task, he has to make choices about delegating the work to a right set of employees.
“To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.” rn~ Albert Einstein Growth – an ever-evolving and continuous process – is an outcome of a successful innovation. As a thing of creativity evolves from an Idea, the organization should welcome new ideas and suggestions. The CEO should invite and appreciate the participation of everyone – from top to bottom in the hierarchy – throughout the organization when it comes to innovating and implementing practices to accomplish the organization's goals.
"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily." ~ Zig Ziglar For the CEO, it is always a challenge to motivate his employees and also keep them motivated. Motivated employees are at the forefront to take up new challenges, adapt new ideas and deliver results. A self-motivated employee also contributes by sharing his own innovative ideas and encourages his colleagues to do the same. This article showcases some effective strategies for a CEO to motivate his employees. 1. One-on-one Approach
Every business has its ups and downs. This article talks about how you can do your business continuity planning (BCP) in a better way as it is the BCP that allows you to continuously deliver your products or services even under adverse conditions. Business Continuity Planning prepares an organization for the internal interruptions – power failure, technical problems – and exte al threats like natural calamities, supply chain problems and more.
Setting up an office isn’t as hard as it is made out to be! Or is it? On the face of it, you think it couldn’t be much of a trouble because all you need to do is get hold of decent space, set up some furniture and workstations and get your guys in. But when you actually get around organizing it, you find it requires meticulous planning and budgeting to create just the right kind of set up required for your business. Let’s look at some essential points to keep in mind while setting up a new office for your small business.
Employee disengagement is a malaise that can strike any organization at any point of time and it is best to stem the rot at the inception rather than end up fire-fighting. In the first part of this series "The Warning Signals of Employee Disengagement", we looked at the factors that incite employee disengagement. Let's take a quick recap: 1. Performance graph of an enthusiastic, efficient employee dipsr This is a warning sign. Take remedial measures before it is too late. 2. Proactive employees become reactiver
According to Wikipedia, “Customer satisfaction is defined as the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Customer satisfaction is a great indicator of customer response to your products and services and your brand identity. While figures pertaining to sales or market share reflect company’s current performance in the market, the level of customer satisfaction defines the sustainability of your brand in the market.
93 percent of large enterprises had a security breach in 2012 while 87 percent of small businesses faced a security breach in the same year which is up by 11% over the last year, says a UK-based PwC survey. This article discusses the ways in which you can protect your database from hackers. Businesses these days can’t do without Internet. From business promotion to employing cloud services for online transactions, Internet is an essential element of information, data handling and operational infrastructure.
Business meetings, tight schedules, business development activities, conferences, product launches and a heap of other responsibilities leave the CEO and associated management team exhausted, stressed and wanting for some relief out of physical and mental stress. Here we discuss some ways and techniques that can help the CEO to relieve stress and tension: Beautify the Surroundings
As the CEO, do you at times find yourself spending a critical portion of your productive hours in resolving conflicts among your team members? In other words, the time which could have been invested in more result-oriented jobs is spent on the rather unproductive and at times even frustrating job of resolving conflict.
Small businesses often fail because of their inability to take into account the actual competition. The competition is usually tougher in fields where a number of small businesses are jostling for space and have more or less similar products or services on offer. To survive in that competition and rise ahead of competitors is a real challenge for small business owners. To do this, you need to study and analyze your competition right from the beginning. Here are a few tips that will help you beat your rivals: 1. Do market analysis
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu Strategic thinking is a systematic draft of steps or actions that help company not only sustain its current position but also achieve its growth targets at the end of a specific period or duration. It involves strategic planning, operational planning, managing resources effectively and identifying your target audience.
Just running a company is hard enough. But building, expanding and enhancing the company and executing a strategic plan toward achieving set targets is much harder. Typically, a company experiences 5 stages of growth and development. Depending upon how the people at the helm handle these 5 stages, overcome the challenges and capitalize on opportunities, determines how the successful the company will become. Sit back for a moment and think, which stage is your company in?
Giving presentations, typically PowerPoint, is mostly a routine matter for CEOs and top managers Business leaders extensively use PowerPoint for a multitude of purposes including showcasing their strategies, presenting their business plans, declaring their financial results, persuading investors to put their money in their business or conducting different training sessions.