Don’t Lose a Good Employee

A lesson learned in growing a business Many years ago – and several lifetimes ago, it seems — I made a classic supervisory mistake.  Was I going to lose a good employee? I must have been looking over Gary’s shoulder a little too closely – inspecting how well he had cleaned the 60-quart bowl for the bakery’s Hobart mixer.  He turned around, glared at me, and in a voice strained with frustration, started jumping up and down, arms extended upward, …

“Sharing the Sandbox” — How to Motivate Your Employees

Running a business is not just challenging, stressful and exhausting. It’s a tremendous vehicle for creativity — solving problems, creating new products or services, finding better ways to do things. Your business is a creative “sandbox” for you to play in. Creativity isn’t just for artists. In the business world, creativity needs both sides of the brain: the right side, for the ideas, and the left side for the discipline, patience and orientation to detail needed to implement the idea. You’ve …