Small Business Blog from Atlantic Canada

Marc Raul is today’s guest. He is the product specialist with Brother Canada. He talks about how to go about acquiring good quality small business infrastructure such as printer. Most small business owners working in their home office require three key pieces of equipment: a phone, a computer and a printer. Yet when you want to buy a printer, there are so many different models and features to consider that the task can be daunting. To facilitate the decision-making process, here is a list of what to consider before you buy.

Successful strategy formulation requires business sense, shrewd industry and competitive analysis. On the other hand successful strategy implementation requires strong leadership, proper resource allocation, business processes and policies that support the strategy and a very high level of focus. It is an operations activity. Here is strategy explained by a few individuals in 140 characters or less.

Did you know that a project’s success or failure is determined to a large extent even before the charter is signed. As a project manager, your goal is to deliver a project that will benefit the business. Unless it is regulatory, your project deliverable will help the business increase revenue and/or reduce costs. It is your moral responsibility to get it right the first time. Following the guidelines in this post has helped me succeed as a project manager. I trust it will help you too.

Just as you cannot solve a problem without identifying one, you cannot plan for risks without identifying risks. So whether you are managing a project, program or business, it is prudent to spend some time identifying the risk drivers. Without getting into jargons, let’s discuss a common sense approach to identifying risks.

Leading in the best of times has been a challenge. Leaders never have all the information they need to make the decision and waiting for the complete information results in inaction. In Leadership in the era of economic uncertainty, Ram Charan (no relation to me) succinctly puts it: “We will not know when we have turned the corner and we cannot envision the shape and scope of the world that will emerge. What we can be sure of is that this is a time of tumultuous change and with change comes both the danger and opportunity.”

Welcome to the revised version of Carnival of Small Business Issues. I hope to pick this carnival up on a regular basis. If you are interested in hosting the Carnival let me know and we’ll set you up.

Be it presentations, providing critical feedback, selling, motivating your team or interviewing, “Mastering Communication at Work: How to Lead, Manage, and Influence - Review” offers practical suggestions on how to maximize the return on your speaking time. The book offers insights into how to build trust, credibility and relationships with everyone within and outside the organization. It is written in a conversational style and the authors make effective use of case studies and examples to drive home their point.

The Mawhinney group of companies in Saint John, NB recently closed its operations. While I have not researched it, it probably is a safe assumption that there are number of businesses out there who have ceased to operate. While most leaders cite lack of financial resources, credit crunch, etc., I keep wondering if that is the root cause of their business failures. Is it truly the paucity of funds or is the leaders’ management that forced them to cease operations?

I just passed the PMP® exam last week - and as with any project closure one needs to file away lessons learned. But first some comments on project management and the PMP® certification exam. Having gone through the exam, I now more firmly believe that project management is common sense.Read the PMBOK again. It takes a few readings for the PMBOK contents to sink in. I did not read it three times- though I would have liked to review it at least twice. I managed to go over it just once.

We are living in one of the most unsettling periods in human history. Businesses are being nationalized. William Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institute, along with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggests that while the recession might end by the end of the year, sustainable recovery may take a while. Perhaps the greatest economic lesson we will learn is that we cannot spend our way out of a recession. People cannot spend what they do not have. And this goes for governments too. Speaking of people, when they find themselves on path to poverty losing everything they have worked for all their lives, I guess rationality goes out of the window.