Related Articles

ISO 9001, What Next?
The overriding goal of ISO-14000. (History 1995)As ISO-9000 becomes a way of life for the global business community, ISO-14000 is almost ready to debut with its own set of standards for voluntary environmental compliance.

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Preventative Maintenance of Company Delivery Vehicles
If you have company delivery vehicles at your small or medium sized business you should have a preventative maintenance schedule and procedures for employees who are drivers of these vehicles. When discussing preventative maintenance over the years with business owners the first thing which comes to mind is 'Oil change' and usually the business owner who is on the hook for the loans on these vehicles is more than aware of that fact.

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Compensation and Six Sigma Black Belts
One of the more ambiguous elements of a Six Sigma project is the level and type of compensation the organization should give to its Six Sigma leaders and team members. On the one hand, setting compensation is not an integral part of any stage of a Six Sigma project; on the other hand, compensation is an important instrument to build loyalty and a sense of accomplishment that is a crucial element to the organization's Six Sigma success.

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Entitlement Programs Kill Productivity
In articles I've written over the years, I have used "laissez-faire," a term more frequently used to characterize governments than businesses, to describe a rather laid-back management style. When I use this term, I am referring to management personnel who put very little pressure on employees to achieve their full potential by pushing them toward peak performance levels.

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Climb out of the Box - How to Hold Effective Meetings
Out of the box thinking is a popular fad today. And yet, in order to leave a box, you have to realize that you are in one.

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Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing in a Business Perspective
Business IntelligenceBusiness Intelligence has become a very important activity in the business arena irrespective of the domain due to the fact that managers need to analyze comprehensively in order to face the challenges.Data sourcing, data analysing, extracting the correct information for a given criteria, assessing the risks and finally supporting the decision making process are the main components of BI.

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Never Hire Anyone Dumber Than You Are!
In a previous life I was a Navy Pilot. Great life, great people to be around.

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What Makes A Good Media Story?
Media relations can be difficult, but also rewarding. And the lessons we learn from working with newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and online publications should increase the effectiveness of all our communication initiatives.

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Making Your Workers Your Partners
There is an inherent conflict between owners and managers of companies. The former want, for instance, to minimize costs - the latter to draw huge salaries as long as they are in power (who knows what will transpire tomorrow).

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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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Knowledge Management - Creating a Sustainable Yellow Pages System
How can I "know who knows" None of us can personally know more than around 250 people, yet we want our companies to be smart, learning organisations where it's easy to find the right person to talk to. This is why many organisations create "yellow pages" applications, which enable employees to find and contact other staff with particular expertise and skills.

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What Every Manager Should Know About How to Conduct Successful Meetings
Do you announce a meeting and find either no one shows up on time, they come with their own agenda, or the meeting goes on and on? If this is true in your case, then worry no more.Here are six steps to help you develop successful meetings:1.

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Character: Is It Necessary In Leadership? (Part Two)
In the first part of this two part article, I talked about the importance of character in leadership. After all, the best leadership involves the people bonding with the leader in deep, human, emotional ways.

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Are You Using the Right Form of Energy?
As we near the end of summer, here is a question I have for you, "Are you using the right form of energy to grow your business?" Are you having trouble growing your small business as fast as you want? Are you making all the right moves and still the business just inches forward? Read this article and see if you are using the right form of energy to grow your small business?Head EnergyMy consulting experiences have taught me there are two types of business energy. I call the first type "head energy".

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Problem Solving
When problem solving, you may recognize that you were working on a symptom instead of the problem. An analysis of the more clearly defined problem may require an alteration to the objectives or the ideal solution.

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Collaboration: 3 Keys to Keeping Your Documents from Getting Lost in the Shuffle
Often, collaborating documents in a team or in a business can feel like a complex sports play gone wrong. The ball gets passed off to the wrong person, dropped, or even lost.

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Never Wrestle with a PIG
The business books at the library and book stores fill many shelves. Some authors tend to run a little long at the keyboard.

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Can What Someone Does Off-hours Affect Your Business?
Q: How much do I have to worry about what people who are part of my far-flung "virtual" corporation do when they're not working directly for me? I can't share too many details because the situation is touchy, as you might expect, but basically I have someone working for me as a writer, contributing material for my blog, and I have been hearing that he's writing some pretty far out, offensive material on other sites. Do I need to worry about it?A: This is a difficult situation, no question, and one that comes up more and more as we've moved away from employee-as-chattel-for-life and towards plug-and- play cogs in all the machines of the modern economy.

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Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 2, How to Hold a Teleconference
Even a well-planned teleconference can go poorly. Some people treat any meeting as a casual social activity instead of as a serious business project.

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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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