Monday Mornings with Madison
November 14, 2016

Meeting Etiquette: Rules of the Road

Issue #447

Meetings cost organizations a lot of money.  Consider the hourly rate (wages plus benefits) of each person at the meeting.  Then add in the expense of bringing everyone together, if some of the participants are at different locations.  It can add up.   Yet, in all likelihood, most employees will attend dozens or hundreds of meetings throughout their careers.  And most employees loathe attending meetings.  That’s because meetings take up valuable time that a person could use to “get their work done.”  To add insult to injury, not only do meetings eat away at productivity, they often feel like a waste of time. That’s because so many meetings veer off topic, devolve into entire conversations that have no place in the meeting, have numerous interruptions, and/or drag on way past their scheduled time, resulting in the need for another meeting. Continue reading →

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November 7, 2016

Capricious or Cutting-Edge: When Should a Business Make Changes?

Issue #446

It’s been said that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”  The point is that sometimes you have to break routines and try new processes, products, systems or strategies to find better ways of doing things.  Innovation usually leads to improvement, and refusing to ever try new things is futile and foolish.  Consider the Luddites.  The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers and weavers who, fearing the end of their trade, protested against newly developed labor-saving technologies between 1811 and 1816.  New inventions such as the stocking frames, spinning frames and power of the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace Luddites with less-skilled, low-wage laborers, leaving them unemployed and obsolete.  The Luddite movement culminated in a region-wide rebellion in Northwestern England that required a massive deployment of military force to suppress.  So famous was their rebellion that today the term Luddite has become synonymous with anyone opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization or new technology, in general. Continue reading →

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October 10, 2016

Top 10 Reasons Employees Stay with their Employer, Part 2

Issue #445

It is well-established that employee turnover is both costly and wasteful.  High employee turnover is, in fact, one of the biggest impediments to positive business growth, no matter the industry.  In the majority of instances, the cost to recruit, hire and train new employees and the additional workload that the process puts on management and existing employees adds no value to the business.  When good employees leave a company by choice, it is just a loss.  So employee turnover has a huge effect on profitability.  For that reason alone, companies with high churn should work hard to reduce the employee turnover rate. Continue reading →

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September 26, 2016

Top 10 Reasons Employees Stay with their Employer, Part 1

Issue #444

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee turnover is highest in industries such as hospitality, banking and finance, healthcare and the service sector.  Turnover also seems to vary by wage and role of employee.   For example, employee turnover of salespeople is often particularly high.   This should be of critical importance to businesses because turnover is a huge expense.   According to a study conducted in November 2012 by the Center for American Progress, the estimated average cost to replace an employee in the U.S. was 16% of annual salary for high-turnover, low-paying jobs (earning under $30,000 a year), 20% of annual salary for mid-range positions (earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year), and up to a whopping 213% of annual salary for highly educated executive positions.   That means the cost to replace a $10/hour retail employee would cost a company on average $3,328, while the cost to replace a $40k manager would be $8,000.  And the cost to replace a $100k C-Suite exec is $213,000. Continue reading →

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September 19, 2016

Impossible…. An Apostrophe Away from “I’m Possible”

Issue #443

Arguably, no word in the English language is more daunting and discouraging than I-M-P-O-S-S-B-L-E.   It is like a giant flashing red stop sign that halts impetus in its tracks.  It drains energy from any endeavor.  It is just a really long word that means N-O.  No, it cannot be done.  No, it is not achievable.   No, it is not realistic.  It is the favorite word of skeptics, naysayers and negative ninnies.  It renders requests as unreasonable and ideas as ridiculous.  Impossible is the destroyer of potential, promises and prospects.  As the word says so clearly, impossible is the slayer of possibilities. Continue reading →

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September 12, 2016

Recruitment 2.0 – Acquiring Companies to Get Top Talent

Issue #442

Once upon a time, in the age-old, gritty world of business mergers and acquisitions, the focus was on acquiring companies in order to get its patents, property, products, processes, power or prestige.   Think of AT&T acquiring Bell South in 2006 for $83 Billion and Exxon acquiring Mobile in 1998 for $80.3 Billion.   The advertising industry used serial mergers to achieve a global presence, attain substantial influence over media, and offer a full range of marketing services to international clientele.  In some cases, corporate acquisitions have been used to keep patents out of the hands of those who might be tempted to assert them against a mega corporation.   But, while companies still want to acquire innovative institutions and inventive ideas, corporate acquisition efforts have taken an odd and interesting turn in the 21st century.  Instead of buying the competition’s better widgets or customer base, today’s mega corporations are acquiring companies just to get its employees. Continue reading →

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September 6, 2016

Building a Woman-Friendly Workplace – Part 2

Issue #441

Part 2 – Possible Solutions

The idea that there is still gender disparity in compensation and opportunities in 21st century American business may seem ludicrous to some.  After all, there are some very powerful women leading some of the world’s biggest companies.  Mary Barra is CEO of General Motors.  Ginni Rometty is CEO of IBM.  Indra Nooyi is CEO at Pepsico.  Marilyn Hewson is CEO of Lockheed Martin.  Safra Catz is CEO of Oracle.  And beyond Fortune 500 companies, there are female trailblazers such as Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of the New York Times and Oprah Winfrey, creator of O Network.  These women are not just successful, but the companies they lead represent a cross-section of business sectors from aviation to automotive to technology and beyond.   But the real story is in the numbers.   While the 2016 Fortune 500 list shows that 21 companies have women CEOs, those are fewer than the 24 female Fortune 500 CEOs in 2014 and 2015.  More importantly, of the 29 companies that were added to the Fortune 500 list this year, only one had a female at the helm.  The decline in female CEOs in the Fortune 500 this year is due to retirements, mergers and other factors that had nothing to do with gender or the quality of their leadership.   But, with so few females to begin with (just 4-5% in all), any loss of female representation at the top is more noticeable. Continue reading →

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August 29, 2016

Building a Woman-Friendly Workplace – Part 1

Issue #440

Part 1 – The Barriers

As of July 2014, women comprised over 50.8% (162 million) of the total U.S. population and 47.4% of the total U.S. labor force.  Of the 123 million women who can work (ages 16 years and over), 75.6 million or 57%, are labor force participants—either working or looking for work. (Comparatively speaking, 69.2% of men 16 years old and older are labor force participants.)  More importantly, women are projected to account for 51% of the increase in total labor force growth between 2008 and 2018.  And yet women in the U.S. still earn only .79 per dollar that a man makes doing the same job.  They also make up less than 25% of all state and nationally-elected government leadership positions and less than 5% of all CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies.   Economists and leaders see this disparity in female earnings and female representation in government as a problem if the nation wants to stay competitive in the global marketplace.  But what can be done to make things more equitable? Continue reading →

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August 22, 2016

Bosses’ Top 10 Pet Peeves about Employees

Issue #439

There are all kinds of bosses in the world.  Management styles vary as widely as people’s personalities.  There is the “do it the way I tell you” directive boss, and the “firm but fair” authoritative manager whose goal is to provide long-term direction and vision.  Then there is the affiliative supervisor who seeks to create harmony amongst employees and management, as well as the “everyone has input” democratic director who is focused on building commitment and encouraging teamwork.  There is also the pacesetting exec who is all about setting high standards and accomplishing tasks and the coaching boss, whose focus is on providing opportunities for professional development. Continue reading →

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August 15, 2016

Relocating for Work

Issue #438

With advances in technology, telecommunications, and transportation, the business world has gotten a whole lot smaller.  Companies, once compelled to expand in geographic proximity to their corporate headquarters (because greater distance would strain management and communications), can now do business on a global scale.  The global marketplace has become more reachable.  For example, in 1936, DELAG Airline  — the world’s first airline to use an aircraft in revenue service — offered passenger flights from Friedrichshafen, Germany to Lakehurst, NJ (4,000 miles) that took 53 to 78 hours westbound, and 43 to 61 hours eastbound.   That made managing a far-away business challenging, especially without Internet, fluid phone service, or computers. Today, 80 years later, a direct flight from New York to Hong Kong (8,047 miles) takes only about 16 hours.  Aviation, cell phones, Skype, computers, and the Cloud have all but erased many of the hindrances of doing business internationally… making the world a whole lot smaller.  But, it could also be said that the business world has also gotten bigger.  Global markets have multiplied business opportunities exponentially, and not just for mega multinational corporations.  Opportunities to grow abound for even the smallest startups.   In that sense, the business world has gotten exponentially bigger. Continue reading →

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