Ian Ferguson
CEO Rants and Raves
CEO Perspective: The 10 Commandments of Leadership
As a CEO you need to be very concerned about your own leadership of the organization and the skills of your management team when it comes to their leadership abilities. We have all dealt with the ‘special’ individual contributor that we put up with because they seem indispensible but when it comes to management, bad behaviour or lack of appropriate people skills is unacceptable and has a multiplying effect on the whole organization. One manager who publicly derides his troops effects the whole organization and is very costly.
David Wexler
The Business of HR
The Power Of Communities
Formal Groups such as professional associations (“Strategic Capability Network” or “Human Resources Professionals Association” for HR types) exist already and provide a forum for fellow HR practitioners to learn, and share in methodologies.
Pierre Robitaille
2.0 Leaders
Recruiting in Cyberspace (2)
Ernst & Young landed atop BusinessWeek’s third annual Best Places to Launch a Career ranking in September 2008, unseating rival Deloitte, thanks in part to a recruiting machine in overdrive.
Guest Blog
Guest Blog
The Fast Lane to Positive Cash Flow - Ross Finlay
It’s the dream moment for any entrepreneur – when you cross that magical break-even point and enter into positive cash flow territory. (It’s also a good moment for investors but their dream moment comes when they receive their first dividend cheque.) When we develop our business plans, we always project our break-even point somewhere in the future. This is the point where the anticipation of customer buying propels the revenue over the expected level of expenses. Unfortunately, our planned route to this position doesn’t always pan out in our actual performance. We find that our early stage projections were irrelevant. Straight away we need to re-assess our market, our position in that market, and our assumptions.
Robert Hebert
The Talent Jungle
What are your chances of entrepreneurial success?
A study out of Harvard University found that first time entrepreneurs have only a 22% chance of succeeding. This likely won’t surprise many people unless of course you are one of the countless dreamers who parade their sure-fire business plans on CBC’s Dragon’s Den each and every week. Simply stated, an awful lot of things have to go right for an entrepreneurial endeavor to be successful, however success is defined.
Trina Alexson
The Management Maze
Leading by Example
There is an old story that goes something like this…
There was a treasure ship on its way back to port. About halfway there, a pirate approached it, skull and crossbones waving in the breeze!
Pierre Robitaille
2.0 Leaders
Your Fingerprints
It’s said, at least Ram Charan says, (where does he find the time to write all those books?) that you make better judgements about people, find more creative ways to deploy and develop their talents, and make a greater human impact when you take a sincere personal interest in each leader’s development.
Sean ODonovan
The Pragmatic Marketer
Post Click Marketing Insights -Landing Page best Practices to Boost Conversions - Part 2
In my last post I identified six best practices that you should pay attention to when creating landing pages.
Here are six more that will further help you get your landing pages “right the first time”
David Wexler
The Business of HR
What If The City Of Toronto Was A Business?
As a Torontonian, how sad it is to read and hear on a daily basis, about the ongoing strike by the city’s unionized civic workers, and the hardships being experienced by residents and striking workers alike. I’m sure that once the strike is over, there will be much finger-pointing with respect to who was responsible for the strike, and how it could have been avoided or at least minimized in terms of its duration.
There has been substantial attention paid by the media in recent months, especially post the economic meltdown, to substantial differences in public sector vs. private sector pay, benefits, and retirement provisions. While I do believe that it is long past time that all levels of Government in this country re-visited the state of the union(s) so to speak, this is not about the right or wrong of previously negotiated terms and conditions, which were all negotiated in good faith. Rather, the need exists to re-visit what kinds of labour arrangements are needed to ensure fairness and flexibility for both service providers and recipients in the 21st century.
Looking at the current civic workers’ strike in Toronto, though, here are some thoughts at a distance around how the City might handle things going forward, if its leaders are thinking and acting with the best interests of its shareholders (the taxpayers of the City) in mind.
Robert Hebert
The Talent Jungle
“I Forgot to Sign”... and Other Misadventures From The Messy World of Non-Competes
This past week, we found ourselves in the middle of a tricky negotiation concerning a ‘non-compete’ clause in an offer of employment. Both the client and candidate had valid though polar opposite positions on the necessity of the clause, its language, term and restrictions. In the end one party made concessions in return for changes to another part of the agreement. It was a lot of work for an eventuality that may well never materialize. However several recent well publicized employment battles serve as reminders that ‘non-competes’ are not a trivial matter.