Apr 19

Ignoring The Law of Unintended Consequences – Common Managerial Mistakes Series

Even the most experienced managers, supervisors, or executives forget about the Law of Unintended Consequences, which says that for every change or action, there are both positive consequences (which, obviously the manager wants), and negative unintended consequences (which the manager doesn’t want). Learn more about this common and often catastrophic situation.

Mary is the head of a realty/real estate company. She decides to create a contest, where the real estate agent that sells the most property (in dollars), will receive a ten thousand dollar bonus. Makes sense. Motivation. Incentive.

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Apr 16

Difference Between Self-Managed and Self-Directed Teams – Food For Thought

I’m embarrassed to admit that it had never occurred to me to distinguish between self-managed and self directed teams. I found this reprintable article that makes a case for making the distinction, so I’m putting it up here. Enjoy!

Difference Between Self-Managed and Self-Directed Teams
By Shirley Lee

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Apr 11

Bacal’s Laws: From 20 Feet Away Everyone Seems Normal

netbyte-design-studio-0403This is a deceptively simple concept that affects much of our lives. It explains that from a distance, or with people we don’t know well (and we may not know many people well) everyone seems psychologically intact, or “normal”.

Until you know people well, they will not tend to display their abnormalities, or neuroses.

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Mar 11

Augment your revenue with new sources – Partner with Bacal & Associates

Over the next while we’re going to be “unveiling” some new ways for you and I to diversify revenue streams, through some partnerships. If you are interested (overviews below) please sign on to our partnering discussion group at this location. I’m going to use that so I can communicate with potential partners without having to repeat everything. If it turns out you have no interest, just unsubscribe.

1) We are looking for a limited number of partners to sell our products (mostly e-items) as affiliates/resellers. Initially, until your first sales, the commission is a paltry 20%, but we’ll increase that quickly after your first few sales. We anticipate most successful resellers will be earning 50% of sales, quickly.

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Mar 10

Augmenting Your Professional Income – #1 Sell our products

The economic difficulties are challenging everyone to find new revenue streams, and this is no less the case with trainers, consultants, HR professionals, and a variety of other professionals. Single revenue stream businesses are suffering even more than multiple revenue stream based businesses.

We’ve always tried, as a business strategy, to develop income from various sources — training, consulting, speaking engagements, keynotes, and also from publishing, writing, and creating learning materials. That strategy has kept us afloat so far in these tough economic times.

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Feb 20

On trainers getting no respect – Take a look in the mirror

I rediscovered something I wrote on the ASTD board.

Recently there’s been some posts expressing how trainers or training departments are handcuffed or interfered with by HR, or executives, or managers or other powerful villains, and that trainers do not get seats at the decision making table.

It’s ironic that the people complaining most loudly about these issues (which tend to have a grain a truth to them at least) are also unable to see their own contributions to the minimization of the training function, and thus, tend to attract the scorn of organization decision makers. An example: Continue reading

May 15

Pro Bono Work For Training/Consulting Business Marketing

In response to a question about the value of doing free (pro bono) work to market a consulting or training business, Robert responds:

I agree that some feel pro bono work is a poor way to generate business, but I’m hesitant to discourage people from giving it a shot. Generally, I’ve found that pro bono speaking (or dirt cheap) doesn’t increase business, but there are exceptions. Some of it is blind luck. Some of it has to do with what you present and how you do it.

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