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Solve Problems Permanently - Ask WHY
As Albert Einstein said:-"The significant problems we face today, cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."Problems don't go away unless you get to the cause - the source of them.

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Critical Success Factors - Next
The Critical Success Factors Focusing on the things that make the biggest difference to your future prosperity. (Note, although this article was written in early 2002, it is totally relevant.

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Office Politics
Office politics! It's just another way of saying: "The employees are not getting along!"When so much of a company's success depends on the employees' ability to work together as a cohesive team, it is critical that people understand and appreciate the differences in each other.Symptoms of Office Politics:ConflictStressJob DissatisfactionPoor communication skillsThe Results:High employee turnoverReduced productivity and profitabilityThe Solution:Improve employee communication and understandingThe Disc Classic behavioral assessment is widely used by the nation's largest companies to improve the working relationship amongst its employees.

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Parenting Your Employees to Better Performance
Have you ever worked for someone who was such a micro-manager that it drove you crazy? And have you ever worked for someone who was so hands-off that you felt like a lone warrior on the battlefield? These are examples of you working for leaders who did not adapt their style based on the employee's needs. I would venture to guess that you were not entirely motivated to put out your very best effort every time when you were feeling such frustrations.

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Overcoming Perfectionism
Perfectionism can get in the way of building or marketing a successful business. It can prevent us from moving ahead quickly or from taking advantage of business opportunities.

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Can Your Corporate Policy Pass the Monkeys, Bananas, and Water-spray Experiment?
Five monkeys were placed in a cage. A banana was hung on a string and a ladder was placed below it.

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How to Meet Quality Standards with ISO 9001
In today's hectic business environment, it is vital that we are all on the same page, right? But how do we know if we meet those standards? Business owners and executives can avoid the uncertainty, and that's where ISO 9001 certification comes in.Standardizing Quality SystemsThe ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, was established in 1947 to develop international standards for everything from electronics to management systems.

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Bringing Ideas to Life: Seven Principles for Pulling Together
You're so excited you're practically bouncing off the walls. This idea-your best ever-is not only going to save the company tens of thousands of dollars this year, it's eventually going to be a moneymaker.

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Management Procedures Usability - How to Improve
Are your people consistently following your procedures? Each year, organizations lose thousands of dollars through common mistakes and lapses in usability. But what does that mean for business owners and executives?Ask yourself: ? Are your required actions described thoroughly and accurately, or are the details left open to interpretation?? Is your content consistent and complete, or are your writers leaving gaps no one has noticed?? Are revisions controlled, or are different people using different versions?? Are your procedures compliant with regulations? Are you sure?? Are all documents written to produce clear, measurable results?If you're unsure about any of the answers to these questions, there is good news: you can make your procedures clear and complete without combing through all of them yourself line by line.

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Innovation Management - Selecting Good Ideas
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation.

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Employee Retention: Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business
The retention of highly skilled knowledge workers is one of the major challenges today for all organizatons. Knowledge workers are those whose work primarily requires the use of "mental power rather than muscle power.

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An Original Perspective on Waging Conflict as a Way to Promote and Restore Self-dignity
Conflict is a fact of life for all of us, but too many painful consequences are generated by avoiding or managing it in the wrong way. When we deal with everybody else day after day in any capacity as leaders or team managers, is inevitable that we will be personally confronted with conflict.

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Try It Out On Your Team First
Wow! You're brilliant! You have a great idea. You've looked at it every possible way to find holes in your logic, fallacies in your assumptions.

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5 Tips For Creating Great Jobs
1) Create A Powerful "Mission Statement"-When your business mission is clear, every part of your business will improve, because you have a clear, definite major purpose. You will more easily attract people that believe in your mission.

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Effective Meetings Begin With a Real Agenda
Everyone knows that an agenda is the key to an effective meeting. But an agenda that consists of a list of nouns, such as budget, software, and picnic, is useless.

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Three Foundation Stones for Building Organizational Integrity
When the stock market crashed in 1929, there were a lot of people who lost everything they had. You would think that the result of that event would be complete and utter despair.

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Small Business Checking Accounts
ACCOUNTING AND BILLINGCHECK BOOKSWe recommend that you maintain a business checking account in addition to a small business credit card merchant account so that you can take credit cards from purchasers. This way you will know exactly how much is going into your merchant account and how much of your volume percentage is being done through credit card usage.

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25 Great Ways to Find the Right People and Not Break the Bank
Are you trying to hire dozens of hourly workers or a senior executive? Where do you look and how do you get the word out? There are many ways to find the right people besides placing want ads.Here are 30 innovative and inexpensive ways to expand the pool of potential applicants.

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Quality Standards with ISO 9001
Standardizing Quality SystemsThe ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, was established in 1947 to develop international standards for everything from electronics to management systems. Having over 13,000 standards currently in place, ISO has created the auditing and certification process known as ISO 9001.

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Management Apathy
I recently received a most interesting phone call.When I answered the phone, I immediately recognized the name of the company as one of the most visible distributors in our construction supply industry.

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