Management Information |
Can A Business Still Be Profitable When People Skills Are Absent?
In our current world of rapid and amazing technological advances, many entrepreneurs have managed to dramatically limit the need for staff in highly profitable operations of all kinds. It is therefore tempting and believable to imagine that with every passing day, the need for people skills is diminishing. In fact most entrepreneurs are convinced that one no longer requires people skills to run a highly profitable enterprise. After all technology can do it all for you. This is both an unfortunate and inaccurate view that can cause a great deal of trouble. While it is true that technology has resulted in much leaner staffed enterprises, the truth of the matter is that businesses still need people. They need people to run the technology and more importantly to make important decisions that will impact on the company and its products and services for years to come. Although the numbers have drastically been reduced, the role of workers and staff in companies has dramatically risen in importance. The fact that you have fewer people running a multi-million dollar operation means that human checks and balances are virtually non-existent. So in effect you will need more reliable and dedicated staff members. There is no way you can achieve this without actively promoting people skills in your organization. It is actually scary that much more power has been put in the hands of fewer people. Meaning that disillusioned and unmotivated workers can cause great damage to any enterprise if they choose to throw a monkey wrench in the works. While a business may at first seem to be hugely successful and profitable, even without the active promotion and nurturing of people skills, this is definitely not a situation that can be sustained for long. The correct long-term approach would be to actively nurture people skills in the top echelons of the business and to promote active staff participation in the management and operations of the business. Nurturing highly motivated workers who will actively contribute creative ideas for improvement in the enterprise is an investment that will pay big for years to come for any management team that makes the effort. Copyright © 2005 Chuck Yorke - All Rights Reserved Chuck Yorke is an organizational development and performance improvement specialist, trainer, consultant and speaker. His specialty is helping companies improve by tapping into the creative ideas of their workers. He is also co-author, along with Norman Bodek, of All You Gotta Do Is Ask, a book that explains how to promote large numbers of ideas from employees. Chuck may be reached at ChuckYorke@yahoo.com
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Strategies for Planning and Conducting Effective Meetings Did you know that business executives spend about half their time sitting in meetings? In fact, 40 to 50 percent of their working hours are consumed by meetings, according to a study by the Annenberg School of Communications at UCLA and the University of Minnesota's Training & Development Research Center.Meetings are inevitable - whether you're a business executive or member of a volunteer, social, or civic organization. Use QA As Your First Step To Outsourcing Quality Assurance, or QA, is often given short shrift in a software development organization, especially when budgets are tight. When debating the software development budget at one of my software companies, the CEO finally asked, "Well, do you really want to hire a QA guy, or a programmer to add features to the software?"It was a tough choice. CEOs Are Great, Top CEOs Are Greater People in leading positions are often in a dilemma: on one hand they are supposed to give great performances, make the right decisions and so forth; on the other hand, they have to fill the role of a very confident and self-assured manager. This may be considered a dilemma because CEOs are expected to be almost supernatural, and asking for assistance in what is supposed to be their core competence (leadership!) simply does not fit the picture, no matter how necessary it may be. Delegation - The Basic Steps To Reducing Your Workload And Creating A Successful Team If you have a task greater than you can handle on your own, then you need to delegate. Not a choice many of us choose to make, but one we can all learn. Time-Wasting Problems - One Question to Move You Forward In any organisation, progress is frequently impaired by the time taken up to resolve problems that occur again and again - usually with people's performance (or not!). At a macro level, there could just seem to be 'lots of problems', which is a symptom in itself. How To Learn Great Management from Our Kids Learning comes from many places. And one of the most wondrous opportunities is right in front of us. Why Your Business Needs an E-Mail Policy Why is it imperative to have a company E-Mail Policy? It issimply good business, that's why! In addition, having a clearand detailed e-mail policy in place, one that employees sign anddate before they are allowed access through your businesss'computers, is critical to you being able to enforce or react tosituations that may arise at a later date.Even assuming you have the best folks working for you, or on yourbehalf, does not negate the need for this type of policy to beestablished. Create Your Methodology Based on a Standard Framework - Part One OK. So you have decided that your organization has to improve the way in which it works. Your Organization Is Only as Good as Your People Let's begin by singing the jingle from an old US Army commercial. Ready? Sing! "Be all that you can be, in the Aaaaarmy. Business Fit I have been an entrepreneur for over twenty years and have absolutely embraced information that would help maintain a well managed and profitable business. We have been a part of the information era for sometime now. 5 Creative Evolutionary Leadership Niche Strategies! I have a short story to share with you about an importantskill many leaders need to develop, use and perfect.Life is a journey. Planning a Productive Retreat What value is there in leadership or team-building retreats? Just consider the following.An executive committee of an association, deliberating on strategic planning issues, identified "who we are" in terms of their membership. Lets Flourish and Prosper! Some say that in business as in sex: if it is good, it's great and if it is bad it's still pretty good. This does not happen to be true. How to Create Trust People buy from you, offer help, and grant rewards based on trust. Here are ways to increase your success by creating trust. Performance Evaluations Can Be Beneficial THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW MEETING: It's a fact - most supervisors and employees have negative feelings toward performance appraisals and appraisal interviews. It's often necessary to shift people's thinking from the perception that the interview is a time of judgment to the perspective that supervisors can provide support and direction to employees who want to improve their productivity and be involved in the process. How To Rebuild Trust Here are some quick thoughts on ways to turn things around.Determine the real reasons why trust has diminished. Managing Motivation "Without the chance to meaningfully participate in steering one's own destiny, without the opportunity to gain the sincere respect of one's own peers, without an honest stake in making the community more successful through one's own work and ideas, employability can quickly decay into generic training programs or bogus choices.. Computer Consulting Profit Secrets Do you own or manage a computer consulting company? Are you having trouble growing your computer consulting company's profits?If so, then you must learn how to focus on your computer consulting firm's profit and bottom line.In this article, we'll look at 7 profit secrets and strategies you can use in your computer consulting business, to ensure that you are able to balance your clients' small business IT needs against your own computer consulting company's profitability challenges. Five Problem-Solving Success Tips The ability to solve complicated problems quickly is more important than ever in today's tough economy.From the time we're little kids, we're taught to solve problems by trial and error. Internal Control - The Why and How Many retailers do not have good internal controls in place and place little importance on them. They are concerned with the buying and selling of merchandise and do not place enough emphasis on making certain that the sales get recorded, the money gets in the bank, the invoices are paid only once and the inventory reports are correct. |
home | site map | contact us |