Long pointless meetings are useful in that they keep incompetent people from interfering with those who are working.

Bad meetings are a cultural malady that senior executives pass on to new employees.

An employee who needs permission to buy a box of paperclips can spend tens of...

QuickBooks is a great accounting program for home-based businesses to track their income and expenses. It is easy to learn and simple to use. It has a great Help file. You do not need an accounting background to be able to generate reports such as a Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet needed for...

Quick Tip – How to Set SMART Goals for Your Meeting

The first step in planning an agenda is to identify the goals for the meeting. Properly done, goals have five S M A R T characteristics. They are:

> Specific.

The goal must tell exactly what will be accomplished. For...

Quick Tip – How to Set a Goal for Your Meeting

Goals are critically important for the success of a meeting. You must know what you want so you can ask for it. And the participants need to know what you want so they can help you get it. Without goals, a meeting becomes a journey...

Most people treat meetings as a free resource that can be used to deal with any issue. As a result, huge amounts of time and money are wasted on trivia.

A meeting is a business activity (not a social event) and should be designed to earn a profit. Heres how.

Once youve prepared...

Quick Tip – Do Your Meetings Have a Complete Agenda?

Most agendas for a meeting look like this.

* Budget

* Payroll

* Staff

* Sales

* Zvoufzxtn

Some people tell me, “That’s a perfectly good agenda. I know what all of those things...

Heres an easy quiz to check the health of your meetings.

1) Who leads your meetings? — a) No one, b) Whoever has the loudest voice, c) A facilitator

2) What happens to the ideas in your meetings? — a) If we had to think of ideas, it would be work, b) We make fun of...

It’s obvious that, for a team to work effectively, it needs to include all the skills required for the job in hand. What may not be so obvious, but also key to excellent performance, is that the team uses a variety of team-focused strengths. Meredith Belbin, amongst others, identified a...

Any business out there can benefit from quality management. Whether you are producing thumb tacks or if you are producing IT equipment, there is little doubt that they need to be of the highest levels of quality. Yet, as your business grows, you will find it farther and father difficult to...

I have seen many changes in my forty years as a professional management consultant, particularly in the business change and management improvement practices. My specialty is applying information technology for the benefit of the business. In the 1960s and 1970s, we developed information systems...

Why Train?

Simple really: training improves skills, techniques, knowledge and attitude whatever an individual’s role within an organisation. Ongoing staff training and development is crucial if you want to improve business performance and meet your targets.

Without a...

Business cards can cost upwards of $200 for a set of 1000 nicely printed cards. That price can be quickly increased with special shapes, rounded corners, raised foil lettering, metal or plastic cards and various other exciting new features.

With an expensive product comes the need to...