By my definition, it is the most valuable intangible asset of any organization. The Human Element is the actuator, custodian, and perpetuator of the organization’s culture. It is the single most powerful determinant of success for a healthy and viable business. Only with a healthy company culture ca...

Have you ever wanted to put on a small event to showcase or show off your product or services but just don't have the budget? Then you should know about what is called the Marketing Development Fund or MDF for short. It is the term used for funds available from vendors and partners of products and s...

Are you running a help desk, service desk or a call center? And do you know the difference? I find it odd that so many small companies try to run some version of a help desk as if they had infinite technical resources like a call center. They say, “We want a real person to answer the phone when the ...

I usually blog about things that are directly related to running your business, but I do have things related to exercise, relaxation, motivation, and just good old inspiration I'd like to share from time to time. Well, it's that time. :)

I make it a point to eat right and exercise regularly to stay...

If you're a small business, including sole proprietors, there is a bit of global information that you may not realize is actually very important to your business - it's the US Stock Market. Now, if you're in China, Japan, India or the UK and you only do business inside your own country, you should c...

You have to learn how to filter your world to stop the interrupts and in today’s business world that means everything from your phone, the people around you when you’re in an office, to the content that's stuffed into your face as you do your job. And now in the 21st century, it’s not just somebody ...

Having worked with so many service companies over the years I've seen and felt the pains of the roller coaster that is the tech workforce. The smaller your company is the more you feel it when someone even gets sick let alone has to part ways with the company. I say you should always know who the ne...

One of my measures of the maturity of a service team is their ability to have a weekly stand-up meeting every Monday morning. Rain or shine, good or bad, fire and flames or all quit. By the way, I actually prefer the term Scrum as it is an Agile term and it really is more appropriate for how I think...

Jeff asks...

In The Ten Golden Rules of PSA you indicate Rule #8 is – All work is scheduled in 3 days in advance.
I understand that if everything is a priority then nothing is, but How do you arrive at the "3" days?
Also, I assume the 3 days out is for field service only? We also provide a help desk ...

Most small and medium-sized companies address customer service issues related to the mechanism we call Service Delivery as just part of the day-to-day ongoing workload and never really track it. The only tracking is the recent relevant memory of those involved. And if it was a particularly bad issue...

The Challenge

I do believe that any business needs a way to benchmark its overall maturity and I do not believe it is necessary for it to be relative to any other business. Of course if the measuring system you select can in fact help gauge your maturity relative to other businesses, especially if ...

When it comes to the execution on the strategy you've laid out for your business, the old methods are sorely lacking in many ways. Much like the waterfall method of project management brought about the advent of agile project management, it's time for a paradigm shift for business strategy execution...