Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

People & Relationships

Micro and Macro HR

Continued from previous article “What are Human Resources and Why Should It Matter to You?”
Macro HR is the strategic function of HR in a particular work environment. Macro HR encompasses the understanding of what HR means to a business. That is, how HR fits into the organization’s structure, mission and planning. Macro HR further incorporates policy and practice development and designating who administrates HR. Additionally, collective bargaining and union avoidance campaigns are generally considered macro related concerns. Some of the vernacular related to macro HR is strategic planning and organizational design and development.
Micro HR is the actual execution of duties as delineated at the macro level. These duties include the administration of policies regarding the selection, hiring, compensation, placement, performance management, promotion, conflict resolution, discipline and discharge of employees. Some of the terms commonly associated with micro HR are operations planning, practices, procedures and administration.
How Macro and Micro HR Impact the Bottom Line
As stated above, a business will encounter difficulties when it fails to account for changes to macro and micro HR practices and changes to our labor and employment laws. Such difficulties include an unsafe workplace, attendance issues, conflict, misconduct, union organizing campaigns, high turnover and litigation. Simply stated, when a business encounters HR related problems, money is lost.
Businesses have money coming in through the “front door” via revenue, venture capital, grants, investors, etc. However, much of this money can exit through the “back door” because of poor HR practices. For instance, time and money is lost when a business realizes, after-the-fact, that it hired the wrong employee and may now have to discharge that employee. Consequently, that business now has to spend money and time finding and training a new employee and may even have to defend its treatment and discharge of the former employee.
Recognizing and efficiently resolving these problems often costs a great deal of time, energy and money. However, time and energy spent upfront, proactively, on HR related matters could help to reduce, and in certain instances eliminate, the loss of money out the “back door.” Thus, HR becomes an investment in capital. Time, energy and money is saved and increased productivity and profits result. This ideology is commonly referred to as preventive, positive or proactive HR. Also, this is sometimes referred to as the human capital management philosophy.
Knowing which HR practices to adopt and which HR disciplines to focus on is crucial in resolving macro and micro HR issues. A competent HR professional knows which disciplines and policies to focus on and understands how the legal environment affects HR. A competent HR professional also knows that effective HR helps transform business from just a place to work into an environment which provides employees varied opportunities for meaningful contributions. Meaningful employee contributions lead to decreased operating costs, innovation and increased profits. Implicit in this explanation is the fact that results are measurable via means such as before and after analysis and time and expense audits.
More about Utilizing an HR Attorney as a Consultant will be explained in my article next week. Do look out for it.
As a labor and employment attorney and businessperson, Charles Krugel has represented management in hundreds of negotiations, in-house and 3rd party proceedings. Charles has over 13 years of experience in the field and he has run his own successful management side practice for the past 7 years.

People & Relationships

What are Human Resources and Why Should It Matter to You?

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date November 9, 2007

The simplest definition of human resources (HR) that I can offer is that it’s the management of employees as a capital asset. A business acquires and manages employees, in a manner similar to acquiring and managing any other capital asset. Now what exactly does this entail?
Employees are human and they are a business resource. However, in the same way that machinery or equipment is capital that is acquired, utilized, appreciates or depreciates in value, and which can be improved, sold or discarded, HR relates to the management of employees in a similar manner. Although this explanation may seem callous, under closer examination it is evident that HR pays as much attention to the “human” half of its name as it does to the “resources” aspect.
HR concerns the approach and ideology a business adopts for the life cycle of its employees and its company culture. Recruiting, selecting, compensating, motivating, maintaining and promoting employees are all part of HR. HR further includes strategic, budget and succession planning. Consequently, to some extent, all businesses with more than one employee have HR concerns and practice HR. Furthermore, a business’ HR philosophy may be multidisciplinary or singular in approach.
For example, an HR ideology may focus more on labor and employee relations than on organizational culture and development. Yet, an effective HR philosophy has to acknowledge that because employees affect every facet of business, and are the human face of business, employees have the greatest impact on productivity and profits.
HR affects profit and productivity.
Therefore, in order to improve productivity and profits and decrease employment related expenses, management must know how to treat employees in a fashion which enhances their value. Ultimately, effective HR helps to maximize profits and productivity by minimizing employment related expenses and maximizing employee performance.
In U.S. industry, modern HR theories date back to the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, since the Industrial Revolution, HR has evolved along with changes in production, distribution, finance and, perhaps most importantly, legal and civil rights. HR poses problems for a business when it fails to understand how these changes influence macro and micro HR practices.
More about Macro and Micro HR will be explained in my next article. Do look out for it.
As a labor and employment attorney and businessperson, Charles Krugel has represented management in hundreds of negotiations, in-house and 3rd party proceedings. Charles has over 13 years of experience in the field and he has run his own successful management side practice for the past 7 years.

Starting Up

Things to Consider When Writing a Business Plan

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date November 7, 2007

Once you decided to start your own business, and after you have considered the Things to Consider before Starting a Business, the necessary next step is to write a business plan.
Why Should I Write a Business Plan?
Quite simple: you plan to dedicate a significant amount of your life time (and probably of your money) to this idea. Better make sure that you have a solid base for doing this.
I’m not saying that a business plan is a guarantee for success. I’ve seen too many brilliant business plans which turned out to be a business failure. But without a business plan, chances for failure are much higher. And there is just less at stake modeling a pricing strategy in Excel than trying it out in real life…
But that’s only one aspect. Another one which can’t be rated high enough is communication. Especially if you plan to start a business as a team, a written business plan is essential. Written means: in plain, complete sentences, as text document. While a presentation is great to get the main points across, you will be surprised about the discussions taking place when trying to convert a presentation into a full document. All of a sudden, it turns out that bullets points are interpreted differently between team members or that everybody has a different mental model of the future company.
– Write down the details.
– Write down your assumptions.
– Write down what you know about the market, your potential customers, your competitors, your revenue streams.
This helps you to identify blind spots, and get everybody in your team aligned.
Do I Need to Do the Numbers?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Of course.
Why? Because you need to understand whether you can make a profit on your business model or not. To come to such a conclusion, it’s not sufficient (in my opinion) just to have a top line with revenue estimates, a bunch of monthly expense items and at the bottom line, you calculate the assumed profit or loss. What’s wrong with it? It’s hiding the business drivers which can make or break your business.
I highly recommend to go through the exercise and try to model your business, at least for main business drivers. Try to identify the relevant parameters, and build them as parameters to play with into your spreadsheet:
Just to give you an example: Assume you plan to sell your product to business customers. What do you think is the average deal size you can strike with a customer? What is the sales cycle (some industries have sales cycles well over a year, while other products you can sell at the very first contact). Do you need to visit your customer? How many visits do you think are required to close a deal? How many customers can you handle within a month? How many can a sales rep handle? Do you need to pay sales commissions? etc.
If your revenue estimation sound like “I plan to acquire one new customers a month with a sales cycle of three months, requiring 20% of my time during the acquisitin period. Additionally, I assume that every second customer becomes a repeat customer with a sales cycle of just one month, requiring 10% of my time in this period. My travel costs are about 300$ per visit, and the avarage deal is 20k”, then you are moving in the right direction.
This is just a small part of the questions you should ask yourself. Play with the parameters to judge the impact on your business model. Increasing the sales cycle (and therefore cash in) from two month to six month could kill your company if you do not have enough working capital, for example. Two additional on-site visits can severely affect your margins. Perhaps you need to reconsider your pricing? Or your sales strategy?
Get Feedback
Use your written plan to get feedback. Hand it over to people you trust, give them time to read it, and ask for feedback. Do this often. Chances are that you get a lot of questions like “Ok, you plan to do marketing. What exactly do you plan to do?” Use it to ensure that you have no blind spots in your business plan.
When Should I Present My Business Plan to Investors?
Whenever you are ready to bet your own money on it. Remember, you do not write a business plan for investors. You write it for yourself, to get a business off the ground.
Klaus Wiedemann is Founder and Managing Director of Daisho Blacksmith GmbH, a product and consulting company dedicated to support todays professional with software and methodology to sharpen their competitive edge. He blogs regularly at Not For Slaves, focusing on the working environment of the 21st century and its implications and opportunities for the individual.

Business Trends

Future Work – Part 2

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date November 5, 2007

Continued from Part 1 of the article Future Work by Abe WalkingBear Sanchez
Even more companies will move from the old “department” way of thinking and will seek out commonalities within their different business functions. In the future, like today, redundancy elimination will rule.
In the future, like today, smart business managers won’t waste their time and energy worrying about change or sitting in a bar crying into their scotch. The best way to deal with change is to get ahead of it; it’s kind of like politicians trying to figure out where people are going so they can race ahead of them and claim to be their leader.
In the future, like today, the best way to avoid being run over by change is to accept and embrace it. Business managers not enrolled in a technology class, or constantly improving their skills will have targets painted on their backs. And just like today it’ll only be a matter of time before they get hit.
Smart business managers are and will be those that take the functions they manage and look for ways to add value. A business manager not focused on improvement becomes an administrator at best and a bureaucrat at worst.
Good Jobs, Good Pay
If jobs are going to be outsourced or off shored, chances are good that they’ll be those jobs that are redundant in nature. Rut riding, doing the same old things limits growth and puts businesses and business managers at risk. “I pity the fool.” Mr. T
While we wait for automation to move us to a point where the production of basic food and products is local and unique, just like in the old days; there are things we can do to better participate in and help shape the future.
The growth areas of the future are technology, education and health care. We know that technology is good, although sometimes it’s used in a bad way; but that speaks to the nature of man and his fears. Technology is “the science of the practical.” At one point in our history technology allowed us, via a long stick, to reach higher hanging fruit and to crack nuts with a rock. It makes sense that in the future automated transportation pods (ATPs) will replace cars. Along with cars disappearing so will the deaths of 40,000 + Americans killed, and the hundreds of thousands injured every year in accidents. Just think about the gas/energy that would be saved if efficient pods, in constant communication with each other replaced today’s cars and drivers.
By the way, someone is going to automate the roads, care for the sick and educated the children of the world…why shouldn’t it be Americans?
With Americans aging out in record numbers and with millions already driving by touch, or drunk or high on something; why haven’t we already started to automate existing cars?
And what about the waste in producing millions of new cars every year so that they can sit around unused 90% + of the time? We pay good money to create scrap for the Chinese.
In Closing

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself” Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the near future business function integration and off shore competition will continue to expand. Just like the past. Things in the future will get better for more people but in the transition some friction will be generated, some jobs will cease to exist.
Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles and worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries.

Business Trends

Future Work – Part 1

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date November 4, 2007

This is Part 1 of the article Future Work by Abe WalkingBear Sanchez
Who’s responsible for our future society? How can business managers shape the future?
Ron Fleisher of Tampa FL is a smart man. One of his favorite “quotes” is a window on how we should view the world and our place in that world.

“It is not important that I remain consistent with what I may have said or done in the past; what is important is that I remain faithful to the truth as it reveals itself to me.” M.K. Gandhi

Gandhi, another smart man, understood that our words and actions, collectively and as individuals, are based on what we know. If our knowledge base changes, so must we.
To better understand where we are going we must first draw a line from where we have been to where we are at. Only by referencing the past and the present can we hope to understand the course of the future.
The Past
There was a time, not so very long ago, when priests and kings dictated human activity. Institutions, then and now, are driven by a need to maintain things as they are. The continuation of the status quo is often justified as the preservation of proven traditions. Try to change things and they’d come for you and for your family, and maybe your entire village.
Fear of retribution is counterproductive to the full utilization of human synergy.
In the more recent “old days”, the 1960s, business organizations had many more levels of managers and supervisors, than they do today. It sometimes seemed as if there were more chiefs than Indians. Office spaces were larger in the 60s because room was needed for filing cabinets, but people were smaller. The goal of smart businesses in the 60s was the same as smart businesses today; to meet or exceed the customers’ expectations. Customer expectations were different/lower in the 60s; but then we were just starting to have our lunch eaten by the Japanese quality movement.
Life time employment and powerful unions walked upon the land in the 60s. High tech consisted of large fax machines that looked and sounded like small clothes dryers; a noisy drum that went around and around. In the 60s, person to person interaction limited the amount of work that got done. Meetings on memos and memos on meetings.
The Present
Today technology has reduced the number of filing cabinets and managers/supervisors to a point that if they were small furry animals they’d be on an endangered list. The levels of people involved in business have shrunk sometimes to the point where it’s hard to find a real person with which to interact. Today quality in products and services is a given if you wish to attract customers. Quality in the way that a company does business, its processes, is critical to customer retention. Low communications and data transmission costs coupled with the use of English worldwide has led to jobs being off shored and outsourced. Better and cheaper technology allows fewer people to do more work than ever before. More work being done cheaper by fewer people, sound great, …unless it’s your job that a machine has eliminated, or that is being done by someone else, somewhere else and for less pay and bennies. Today new
technology is old by the time we learn to use it. Not to worry, it’s all part of a greater scheme.
The Future
Gone is the day of the hunter/gatherer, of the family farm, and of the American factory worker. Fading away is the day of the information middleman, of information workers. In his 1999 book, The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination will Transform Your Business, Rolf Jensen starts the introduction by stating “The sun is setting on the Information Society – even before we have fully adjusted to it’s demands.”
Well it’s here, the future, and like an intrusive relative it always seems to show up at dinnertime and unexpected. Change is the constant and it comes faster and faster. To remain cost competitive while providing for the ever increasing demand for customer customization; ever more technology and off shore workers will be employed by business.
Continued tomorrow in Part 2 of the article Future Work by Abe WalkingBear Sanchez
Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles and worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries.