Motivated Innovation

In the simplest of terms, companies hire employees during periods of economic growth and let go of employees during recessions. While this is fundamentally accepted, do companies get carried away with hiring and firing decisions? Is laying off employees shortsighted? Over the past 10-12 years, advanced knowledge of supply chain logistics and the successes of top retail companies--some of which have gone on to fail--have led a number of companies to focus on maximizing efficiency to maximize profit. These companies have looked to meet optimal employment levels to cut costs, avoiding money spent on idle resources. This makes sense to an extent, but a number of companies have reduced employment levels to the bare minimum, running daily business with "skeleton crews"--i.e. the minimum number of employees needed. Efficiency is important, but an overemphasis on efficiency can be detrimental to a company's long-term health. When company management reduces its staff to the ab...

From elementary education to collegiate education, teachers and students review a number of subjects and fields individually and separately from each other. This helps students build fundamental understanding of each individual subject for future use in career and life endeavors. While studying subjects separately remains critical to the education process, students need to understand that learning material separately does not necessarily mean the material should be or will be applied separately in real-life situations. In business and in life, actions have reactions, results, and consequences. When considering different subjects, a decision from one specialty/one department can have an impact on other specialties/departments. For example, the development of new software programs by an IT department can help a sales team improve customer relationship management (CRM), help a medical staff better diagnose medical conditions, help a library staff more easily track the movement of books ...

Recruiting firms. Executive search firms. Headhunters. Staffing agencies. Temp agencies. Human resources.   Despite 2 recessions in the past 10 years and continuously high unemployment rates across the U.S., human resource departments always seem to have more work to do than time to complete the work. Sure, HR has been downsized as much as any other department, but from where is all this work coming?   Furthermore, how can there be any hiring if there are no jobs? Who is interviewing these days? No one seems to be getting interviews. Contrary to popular belief, companies--at least the successful ones--are always looking to hire new employees, whether or not public job listings or ads say so.  Companies always need to stay competitive and solve problems for themselves and their clients and customers. To solve these problems, employers need people--someone needs to analyze, critically think, and take action.  As HR sees reductions in numbers of employees...

In good times and in bad, it is always important to know one's craft.  As a job applicant seeking employment or a professional seeking clients, knowledge and wisdom in one's field are critical to one's credibility and success. Yet, knowledge is not enough, nor is wisdom everything else.  Over the past 10-15 years, the buzz has been about "networking"--i.e. "it's not 'what you know', it's 'who you know'."  Communicating with numerous contacts opens up doors not seen by regular sight, as contacts can help a person uncover job and business opportunities.  Plus, communicating with industry experts can help a person compensate for a lack of experience. With that said, 'what you know' and 'who you know' are clearly important.  However, relying solely on 'what you know' and 'who you know' is not enough.  In today's evolving economy, the business world is changing.  Conventional knowledge sometimes ...

A long-standing adage states that, "Time is money."  If that is the case, do companies or governments evaluate decisions based on time or just based on money? Certainly, there are instances where there is minimal time to make a decision; the only practical consideration of 'time' is that there is little available.  Meanwhile, a number of useful calculations exist in finance and economics to consider number of years spent on projects and the time value of money.  Accounting practices also consider concepts such as appreciation and depreciation. Still, companies and governments must consider the results and consequences of their decisions.  What may save time now may cost time later.  Again, what may save time now may cost time later . Let's consider the following example.  Things are somewhat hectic for a company right now.  The company has found several new clients and is scrambling to hire the personnel to meet the new work demands.  With ...

Over the past 20-30 years, companies and other work functional groups have taken note of organizational culture.  Mission statements, visions, and values have been formalized and emphasized in new employee training and restructuring efforts.  Meanwhile, human resource departments have emerged as critical to company compliance and environmental stability.  At the same time, interpersonal communication--at varying levels of organizations--continue to shape employee attitudes and behaviors.  As companies aggressively or passively develop organizational culture, they risk the emergence of counterculture. Counterculture arises as two or more people find disagreements with company objectives, company operations, supervisory/co-worker attitudes, and other primarily internal concerns.  Specific issues include company rules, disciplinary actions, quotas, and communication (or lack thereof).  In some cases, managers and peers notice resistance developing and seek t...

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  With the American celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday comes the American retail industry's biggest day of the year: Black Friday.  In preparations for the big day, retailers have immersed consumers with multimedia communications, using online, print, and television advertisements to lure consumers to their stores. While it is clear the concept of "sales" is present on Black Friday, oftentimes "sales" is overlooked outside of traditional business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) transactions.  If a product or service is not being sold, it is regularly believed that "sales" is neither present nor needed.  However, the opposite is true: "sales" is everywhere. Workers apply for jobs.  Managers give instructions to subordinates.  Students write papers.  Journalists write articles.  Actors, musicians, and athletes perform.  There are an innumerable amount of other examples.  Reg...