What does the idea of micromanaging mean to you?  A business owner or team leader hovering over your shoulder, making sure you're doing everything exactly as prescribed?  Rember the days of helicopter parents?  Kinda the same idea.

At first glance it may appear as a labor-intensive way to ensure that no mistakes are made ... that results are duplicatable.  But as we will talk about today, micromanaging really does more damage than it does save you from mistakes.

So we're gonna talk about why we do it; we're gonna talk about some of the unintended consequences of micromanaging and then 3 steps that can put us on track to replace micromanaging with something better.

Of all the things my clients seem to have in common, the sometimes desparate search for young new talent to hire appears front and center.  Today we're going to look at some new, possibly non-traditional places to look for our next potential new hires.

We're also going to talk about what these talented young people might be looking for in a desirable work environment.

Thinking about hiring in the near future?  Check out this episode and episode #6 to help you focus your efforts.  Let's get started.

The most recent US Chamber of Commerce data says we have 9.8 million job openings and only 5.9 million unemployeed workers.  So even if everyone who wants a job got one, we'd still have about 4 million open jobs.

The bottom line in that there aren't enough workers to go around.  Our purpose today is NOT to find someone or something to blame or even figure out how or why this happened.  This is the hand we are dealt, so let's focus on how to work with it.

Probably the most important piece of this whole thing is to make sure you have a Customer Service Process in place.  It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive.  You don't even have to start with a budget for Customer Service. 

As one of my mentors told me, "Start small  ...  get fancy later." 

The point is to create a process that makes your clients and customers feel heard, understood and appreciated every time they engage with you, your team and your reputation out in the world.

Quite often my clients say to me, "Ruth, why don't time management systems work?  I've tried sooo many things and none of them seem to work for me."

Well, what I know is that in order for Time Management Strategies to work for anyone, you first need to set yourself up for success.  We can't take a wonderful time management strategy and drop it into the center of the chaos of our businesses and expect things to go well.

Today we'll talk about what you can do to set yourself up to succeed in all things Time Management.  Grab your earbuds, find your favorite bev and a comfortable place to be for a few minutes and let's get started.

As a business coach and consultant for over 16 years, I've noticed that many business owners can't tell me their Business Core Values off the top of their heads.  What I know is that anything that's not relevant or that's not used in the business on a regular basis is quickly forgotten or ignored.

So my questions for you today is, Why have core Values for your business, if you're not going to use them? Or, another way to say it, How can we create something out of the core vlaues of your business that demonstrates HOW you do business and make it something that you and your team members will be able to use?  So we want this thing we create to do 2 things:
1. Demonstrate to potential clients and customers HOW you do business and the foundations you have chosen for your business and

2. Give your team members something they will be able to use as they decide, day by day, what kind of behaviors are welcomed and/or expected in your work environment.

I'm gonna give you 5 or 6 examples of how one company did this, so hang on, this is gonna be good.

As business owners, we understand the importance of systems in the world of business success.  What I know is that as your business grows and scales, the design of your systems naturally needs to change and evolve and that the importance of communication in the success of your systems - increases exponentially.   I look at communiction as the oil that keeps our essential business systems running smoothly.

In this episode, we're gonna talk about designing your communication framework and how to do that WITH your existing team members.  We're gonna talk about testing and modifying the framework until it fits perfectly with the unique way you do business.

We're going to talk about ways to improve your communication with your clients and customers.  Do your clients feel secure knowing HOW communication works FOR THEM at whatever stage of your customer journey they are currently in?  We're also going to talk about your intentional communication with your community.

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There's an old saying that, as business owners, we tend to hire based on skills, but we tend to fire based on behaviors.  We get so focused on the availability of certain required skills, that we overlook completely the questionable or the bad behaviors attached to the human with the skills that we so desperately need.

In this episode we talk about 3 insights into expanding the information you gather about a potential candidate during the interview process.

Whether you do ALL of the pieces of your hiring process yourself, or you do none of it and your Team handles it all, think about your success rate when it comes to hiring the right people that will fit into the culture and work environment in your business.  What would it look like to improve this result?

In this episode we focus on suggestions for the hiring process.  In another episode we'll consider other ways to encourage or weed out new hires during the Onboarding Process.  What steps can we put into place to "Hire Slow and Fire Fast"?