Monday Mornings with Madison

Monthly Archives:
June 2020

When Personal and Professional Collide: How to Set Solid Boundaries between Home and Work Life

Texts ping during dinner. Kids and cats demand attention during a video conference. The boss calls at lunch time. The gardener knocks on the front door in the middle of a sales call. Work keeps crashing into personal time and home life keep interfering with work time. What is a professional to do? As more and more business people continue working from home in an effort to comply with CDC social distancing guidelines, employees are finding it hard to maintain distance between work and home life. Here are some tips to give each its due. Continue reading

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Staffing and Service when Business Scales Back During Covid

Reduced business hours. Abbreviated work schedules. Laid off employees. Smaller teams. How does a business service its internal and external customers when divisions and departments scale back on manufacturing, production or services offered? Or when the business scales back on hours of operation? What does a business do when those who are working can’t get the job done because their schedule has been reduced to a fraction of normal? What should an employee say when asked to work beyond hours paid? It is a challenge that both managers and employees – not to mention customers — are grappling with during the “new normal” in the age of Covid. Here’s what businesses need to do… and not do… while operating in a scaled-back Covid environment. Continue reading

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To Rehire or Not Rehire, That is the Question: Handling a Leadership Conundrum

Most everyone would agree that the global economy has taken a massive blow as a result of the efforts to contain the coronavirus. Staffing was decimated in a multitude of industries from real estate to retail and from hospitality to healthcare. Unemployment soared. Now, some three months later, businesses are emerging from their forced hiatus, unsure of what to do next. Rehire everyone and trust that business will bounce back? Or hold off on rehiring and take a wait-and-see approach? Here are eight tips for how to make that very difficult decision. Continue reading

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Supercharging Sales in Tough Times

Word Count: 1,293 Estimated Read Time: 5 min. In the past, if someone needed to earn big money fast – and the person wasn’t a technology genius, inventor, insightful stock trader or creative scientist — he or she might become … Continue reading

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Looking for the Bright Side in Dark Times

No doubt that times are tough all over. Whether it is social, familial, professional or health-related, just about everyone is enduring some pain due to sheltering-in-place, social distancing and the resulting economic downturn. Even if not severely impacted, few are happy about the Covid crisis and no one is singing a happy tune. In fact, most would agree that the last few months have been pretty harsh. So when someone says “look at the bright side,” one might wonder if that bright light is an oncoming train. But the truth is that even in the darkest times, there is some good… and it is imperative to look for that bright side, both at home and work. Here’s why and how. Continue reading

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