The Three Most Important Rules in Business

Success - The Three Most Important Rules in Businessby Chris Banescu –
From my years of experience working for different companies and teaching various graduate business courses, I developed three rules that management must practice in order to achieve long-term profitability and success. Follow these rules, and a business can remain healthy and prosper. Ignore them, and failure is virtually guaranteed in the long term.

Rule #1 – Always Meet and Exceed Customer Expectations.
Meeting and exceeding customer expectations is the most important but often overlooked rule of business. The only way a company stays in business is if the customer is satisfied with its product or service. This generates profit, builds long-term stability, and meets the challenge of competitors. Meeting expectations should be considered the baseline for company performance. Exceeding expectations should be the ultimate goal. [Read more…]

The Ethical Case for Boycotting Chrysler and GM

American Thinker | by Gary Jason | June 10, 2009

In business ethics, the typical way one makes a judgment about the morality of a business action or practice is to consider the facts surrounding it in the light of four major ethical perspectives. These four ethical theories have been the ones considered most plausible in over two millennia of moral philosophy.

The first perspective is the natural rights view, or what I will call the (A) rights perspective. This view judges an action or practice by asking whether it flows from the rights of those doing it, and more importantly, if it violates the rights of others. [Read more…]

How to Work More Like a Start-Up

Inc.com | by Darren Dahl | May 2009

The first thing you notice when you walk into the Chicago offices of Total Attorneys, which provides software and services to small law firms, is the number of people on their feet. Every morning, the company’s 180 employees gather around the office in groups of five to 10. Close your eyes, take in the often raucous banter and laughter, and it’s easy to mistake Total Attorneys’s headquarters for a college cafeteria. But these meetings, which last for about 15 minutes, are more than mere employee chitchat. They are intended to create what CEO Ed Scanlan calls controlled chaos.

The inspiration for the gatherings comes from a process for designing software called agile development, which aims to promote flexibility, speed, and teamwork. But rather than limit participation to software engineers, Scanlan has deployed agile development concepts companywide, in a drive to make the seven-year-old business act more like the start-up it once was. [Read more…]

Rating Your Doctor

Forbes | by David Whelan | May 25, 2009

Last April doctors told 70-year-old Roseanne Brennan that her mitral heart valve needed to be replaced. It’s a major operation, and she didn’t want to take any chances. So she researched six hospitals near her home in Williamsburg, Va. on a Web site called Health Grades. She downloaded quality reports that detailed complication rates for valve surgery patients at each hospital, grading them on a curve based on how sick the patients were before surgery. [Read more…]

It Isn’t the Economy, Stupid

Wendistry | by Wendi McGowan | May 2009

“Many companies that have gone bust didn’t die because of the recession. They failed for one reason: They treated customers poorly.” – Joel Spolsky

It’s your brand culture…. the fact that you treat your customers poorly and you blame it on the “economic recession.”

Take Circuit City, for example. Out of business in January. Most people didn’t even bother with their going-out-of-business sale. Why? Because you’d have to actually deal with CC unknowledgeable employees, and overpriced merchandise, and unbearable garage-sale-like experience. [Read more…]

Google Searches for Staffing Answers

The Wall Street Journal | by Scott Morrison | May 19, 2009

Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.[Read more…]

From Crisis to Creative Entrepreneurial Liberation

Acton.org | by Anthony B. Bradley | May 6, 2009

Necessity is the mother of invention, said Plato, and the truth of the proverb has been borne out once again. Necessity is generating entrepreneurial energy amid America’s current economic crisis, according to a new study by the Kansas City-based Kaufman Foundation. The study reveals an increase in business startups during 2008, as the recession was taking hold. The rise is consistent with similar previous trends, such as the boomlet occurring after the tech bust of the 1990s. Throughout human history, a nation’s best resource in time of crisis has been the unleashed creative and entrepreneurial spirit of its citizens.

According to the study, U.S. entrepreneurship rates increased for lowest-income-potential and middle-income-potential types of businesses from 2007 to 2008 but decreased for the highest-income-potential types of businesses. In other words, the highest growth rates were among necessity-inspired everyday Americans. The entrepreneurial spirit embedded in all human persons has been stirred in women and men at all levels of society. [Read more…]