Organizations form a whole by arranging and planning for your resources to achieve a purpose. You use organizations to structure and formalize the social relationships of your staff. Organizations can take any number of forms including centralized / decentralized, narrow or broad, functional or general and the like. A good…

Status is the current condition of the activity you are managing. Having an accurate read on the status of your key items is no easy task. It is always helpful to be from Missouri (show me) when it comes to assessing the status of key priorities. Useful questions include: Is…

Expenses are the costs to your business as a consequence of money spent. Some are directly related to your products and some are not. The indirect expenses are also called overhead because there is no direct relationship between the expense and a customer benefit. Managing your expense line if the…

Liquidity are the resources available to you pay your bills. Usually it’s cash; it always needs to be something you can easily convert to cash. Liquidity risk is the number one issue to manage and the lack of liquidity is the number one reason why start-ups fail. If you want…

Risk is a possibility of the loss of something valuable. It can be many things like a threat you don’t understand, uncertainty about your market, or a disruption to your core business. Risk can be qualitative: your plans are incomplete and therefore you don’t see dangers where you should. Or…

Management is the coordination of activities to achieve a goal. It can include the synchronization, blending together, integration, or organization of resources. It is incumbent upon the manager to provide direction, control processes and feedback to the various constituencies that make up the resources of the company. Management differs from…

The 100 day plan is a tool that helps organize, describe, and assign responsibilities for your most important tasks. It is a checklist by which you can stay focused, measure and communicate your progress to your team, owners and investors. It is also a time management tool. Time management is…

Effective Delegation follows a 3 step process: Expectation Setting, Transferring Ownership, and Iteration Expectation Setting Start with an up-front and candid discussion about the problem you are trying to solve. Make sure it is clear, and then discuss what success should look like. Be as colorful as possible so your counter party (subordinate, team) has a solid understanding of the goal. In particular, give…

Conflict resolution, through text or email, can be tempting because it avoids the awkwardness of human interaction. But If you have an awkward message to deliver, have the courage to say it face to face. Don’t hide behind your keyboard. You will create more conflict by trying to avoid conflict…