Using Critical Numbers: An Action Checklist
Are you doing all you can to help employees move your company's key numbers in the right direction? Use this checklist to find out. ... Read story
Open-Book Management Inc.
Swipe These Critical Numbers!
Here's a sampling of common critical numbers by company, industry, and sector. Use this list as a benchmark or tailor these numbers to suit your own needs... Read story
Managing Overtime Pay
"We can't really boost efficiency in our department," a manager complains. "Nobody wants to get the work done any faster for fear they won't be called in ... Read story
Q & A: Improving the Bonus
Question: "We want to replace our current bonus system with a new, improved version. Any suggestions on how to phase in the new bonus... Read story
Want Better Performance? Try Better Planning
When done effectively, strategic planning is among the most potent competitive weapons a company can have. Planning helps everyone better understand the d... Read story
How Transparent is Your Company?
Wouldn't it be great if everyone in your company knew what they were trying to achieve and how they intended to achieve it? Get to that point and you've g... Read story
Troubleshooting Your Critical Numbers
Critical numbers are the key financial indicators that determine your company's success. When they move in the right direction, you know you're on track t... Read story
Keeping Score of Profits
Walk into a company that has its financial information open to everyone, and somewhere, somehow, you're going to see a scoreboard that reports and summari... Read story
Creating Companies of Companies
Once a company grows beyond a few employees, it's easy for people to lose sight of the business. They work in departments. They worry about keeping the bo... Read story
Easing into ESOP Education
A recent issue of the National Center for Employee Ownership's Employee Ownership Report features a mental-health-services company called Telecar... Read story
Turbocharge Your Bonus Plan
Bonus kickers are a great way to motivate employees and boost performance. Take, for example, the basic bonus pool at Jim's Formal Wear - 5% of all... Read story
Are Your Information Systems Up to Speed?
Can your company get and analyze good data? Do you have an effective way of disseminating anything you might learn? If not, your information systems are l... Read story
Strategic Planning 101
Unfortunately, strategic planning gets a bad rap at a lot of companies because it' s perceived as a useless exercise. But at many innovative, well-managed... Read story
State-of-the-Art Training
Maritz: the Multimedia, High-Involvement Classroom The Midwest region of Maritz Travel Co. runs business literacy training classes... Read story
Knowledge Retention Benchmarks for Training
Open-book companies Maritz Travel Co. and Morse Bros. have done their own research to determine the best ways to educate their adult learners. Maritz take... Read story
Lights Out!
"For 25 years I've been telling people to turn the lights out when they leave, to no avail. Then I was at our High Point, N.C., operation, where the manag... Read story
Funny Money
There are plenty of fun, cheap ways to reward employees. The trick is to ask them what types of rewards would be most appropriate. For ins... Read story
The Keys to Designing a Great Business Literacy Program
You mention the words "business literacy," and your employees get the shakes. Maybe they've been out of school awhile, or they regard numbers in the same ... Read story
Better 360° Evaluations
How a low-tech, paper-and-pencil 360° feedback systems can achieve great results Read story
The Handbook on Handbooks
McMurry Publishing, a $30 million custom publishing company based in Phoenix, is guided by policies and procedures that reflect the company' s shared valu... Read story
Q
Question: We have a few key vendors, and we hope that sharing certain timelyinformation with them will gain their trust. Any pitfalls... Read story
Playing Baseball for Profits and Prizes
Carolina Safety Associates, based in Gastonia, N.C., sells and services fire protection equipment from more than a dozen branches throughout the Southeast... Read story
Getting Financial Reports You Can Use
Maybe the controller or CFO in your company is suspicious of sharing financial information. The accounting staff can't seem to speed up the monthly close ... Read story
Teaching Employees to Understand Costs
Question: "I run a big assembly plant, and it's hard for the employees to see a connection between the plant's P&L and what they ... Read story
Boosting Performance with Critical Numbers
Learn how to figure out your company's critical numbers -- and how to use them to build a stronger company. Read story
Strategic Planning: Ground Zero
Never done any serious planning before? Neither had Mishi Apparel, whichlaunched a strategic planning process back in 1997 in connection with a proposed m... Read story
How can you inspire peak performance during crunch times?
Why not use open-book management to inspire peak performance during crunch times? It works. And unlike a lot of motivational efforts, it rarely provokes a... Read story
Fun, Simple Flextime Plans
A large insurance company has a successful long-running program, dubbed Ferris Bueller's Day Off, whichgrants employees two unpl... Read story
Leave No Expense Unchecked
Jim's Formal Wear (JFW), a $25 million wholesaler and retailer of tuxedos based in Trenton, Ill., has been teaching employees how to accurately forecast t... Read story
No Tickets, No Worries
As soon as beverage wholesaler Lenox-Martell started tracking business expenses, it became clear the company's 15 drivers needed to be a tad more cost-con... Read story
Promoting like Mad? Try Personal Succession Planning
Before you promote or otherwise move employees to new posts within your company, ask them to name three interested and qualified successors (inside or out... Read story
State-of-the-Art Human Resources
Human resource pros have come up with a host of methods for integrating HR functions with the participative-management approach. Check out the following t... Read story
Figuring Out Your Critical Number
Eight months ago, Critz Inc., a Savannah, Ga.-based auto dealership, made the decision to start living by its crit... Read story
Hiring for an Open-Book Environment
"We're hiring professionals," explains Carol Carroll of Grafton Staffing & Technology Services. "We know how to hire." Grafton screens its own pros... Read story
Crisis? Let Employees Resolve It
Last spring, APA Industries of Melbourne, Australia was facing a crisis -- a pleasant one, granted, but a crisis all the same. Demand for its product unex... Read story
The Cost Cleaners
Mazzella Wire Rope and Sling Co. called it the Laundry List program . Employees compiled a "laundry list" of dozens of cost items, from w... Read story
Everyone's a Salesperson
Last June, memberships were off a little at Ten Thousand Waves, a 70-employee full-service health spa based in Santa Fe. And there was still a good week t... Read story
Midyear Planning Made Easy
If your company takes midyear planning rather casually, this could be your year to make it a more formal event. At Springfield ReManufacturing Corp., base... Read story
Boosting Accuracy at Point of Sale
The problem at Preston Wynne Inc.? Front-line staff at the company's Saratoga, Calif. day spa were making too many mistakes on the point-of-sale system wh... Read story
What's the Key to Great Forecasting?
It helps to start with good, accurate data. Here are 6 pieces of information to gather. Read story
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