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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Stop me if you've heard this one…

I’m no longer surprised by the number of companies that end up with the wrong people working for them, and for a ridiculously long time at that, before it is remedied. What else would you expect if your behavior is to wait until the last minute to...

About 25 years ago, I worked for a manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon. The owner had box seats for the Portland Trailblazers basketball team. It didn't take me long to figure out that some of the employees there would literally throw down for a chance to get that week’s tickets. Of...

Time is your Widget!

If you're in the service industry in pretty much any fashion, Time is your widget. It's your pizza, shoe, car, chocolate bar, dress, lemon, nut. bolt, or screw. My personal stand on this is hard line and straightforward: If you fail to count and track your widgets, no matter...