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About Small Business There are a number of these surveys out annually, this being the second year that the Kauffman Foundation and Thumbtack.com have surveyed the businesses using Thumbtack for their opinions about the friendliness of the states and cities in which they operate. Is this a scientific sampling of all small businesses similar to say a presidential poll during an election year?  Not really, though it appears Kauffman and Thumbtack were careful in how they worked with the data and in the conclusions they drew.  What is interesting is that respondents range from the self-employed, to the owners and operators of small businesses, to a sampling of mid-sized businesses. (See our post, What is a Small Business? for our definitions.) The small-business friendliest state in the survey?  Utah. The least small-business friendly?  Rhode Island. Missing?  There are nine states from which there were not enough responses to perform ...

Source:  ABC News Business Start-up Tips       “Hey Kids, Let's Start A Business!” Do you remember watching any of those delightful old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland flicks from the late thirties, the Andy Hardy series?  They still show up on late night TV.  These movies are the source of this small business flaw, The Andy Hardy, Hey Kids, Let's Start A Business, Conceit. In every Andy Hardy movie, either Mickey Rooney would look at Judy Garland and say, "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!"  Or, the screenwriter would creatively have Judy Garland say to Mickey Rooney, "Hey, kids, let's. . ." well, you get the idea.  Click here to see Andy say:   "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!"   In the movies, in this case the movie, the 1940 Babes on Broadway, it always works out. There is a barn for a theater, bales of hay for a stage and a trunk full of old clothes for costumes. All the neighborhood kids are trained musicians and dancers, and M...

How to Find Good Employees : On my post of February 18th of this year, we talked about the role of managing stupidity in the success of any organization.  "Stupidity Management" refers to the real need of a business to know the difference between routine tasks that must be completed by rote and those tasks that require innovation and fresh thinking.   Every business has a need for discipline in tasks that must be performed the same way, each and every time. Every business has a need to creative thinking and fresh ideas on certain other tasks or problems, just not every task of problem.   The Hunt for the Creative Individual There are certain jobs in every organization where you, the owner, need original thinking.  Or perhaps you're running a business that lives off original thinkers.  An advertising agency is a business where the company's assets walk out the door every day at five (ish). Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has conducte...

Governance & Management : Science Daily Mar. 25, 2013 — Women's abilities to make fair decisions when competing interests are at stake make them better corporate leaders, researchers have found. A survey of more than 600 board directors showed that women are more likely to consider the rights of others and to take a cooperative approach to decision-making. This approach translates into better performance for their companies. The study, which was published this week in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, was conducted by Chris Bart, professor of strategic management at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, and Gregory McQueen, a McMaster graduate and senior executive associate dean at A.T. Still University's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona. "We've known for some time that companies that have more women on their boards have better results," explains Bart. "Our findings show that having women on the board ...

Scanning through a science report data base, I came across the results of a study that concludes something experienced business owners surely would agree on:  " While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run." ". . .failure is a far better teacher." This according to Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School in a study published in the Academy of Management Journal back in 2010.  Working with Peter Madsen, assistant professor at BYU School of Management, Desai found that organizations not only learned more from failure than success, they retained that knowledge longer. "Whenever you have a failure it causes a company to search for solutions and when you search for solutions it puts you as an executive in a different mindset, a more open mindset," said Desai.  Neophyte entrepreneurs ...

Source: onemansblog As long as we’re considering rude behavior, how do we treat customers who are behaving rudely?  You probably have an idea.  You might think that all humans react in the same way to rudeness from a customer.   But according to our friends at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, customer service employees - read waiters, hotel desk clerks, salespeople - born and raised in North America will actively sabotage a customer who is rude to them, while customer service representatives from China withdraw and lose enthusiasm for their jobs. "In North America, employees tend to retaliate against offensive customers -- doing things like giving bad directions or serving cold food ,” says UBC Sauder School of Business Professor Daniel Skarlicki, a co-author of the study.   “ In China, workers are more likely to reduce the general quality of service they provide to all customers -- nasty or nice...

  Want a customer service employee who will drive you completely stark-raving nuts with their rude behavior?   Go with the candidate with the best credit score. Really.   That is the conclusion of Jeremy Bernerth; LSU Assistant Professor in the E. J. Ourso College of Business Daniel Whitman; Shannon Taylor of Northern Illinois University; and H. Jack Walker of Texas Tech University in a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. You want a jerk of a customer service rep who will drive away customers?    Hire the guy or gal with a great credit score.    Want an effective, warm communicator whom your customers will love?  You got it.  The one with the so-so credit score. Here’s what led the researchers to this conclusion:   " With regards to personality and credit -- it makes sense that conscientiousness is related to good credit, but what was really interesting was that agreeableness was negatively related to your cre...