Seven-year-old Ransom Duel noticed his classmate choking after eating a bite of a Nutella sandwich. Ransom picked up the jar, read “hazelnuts,” and knowing that his friend has an allergy to nuts, ran to get his teacher who brought an epi-pen and saved the friend’s life.

When asked about it afterwards, Ransom said, “I just did the right thing. I didn’t think, ‘Oh I’m gonna be a hero.’”

What can we learn from Ransom about business ethics?

First, do the right thing regardless.

At first, you might think, “What else would Ransom do?”

Nothing.

He could have done nothing as his friend grew sicker by the second.

The opposite of doing the right thing isn’t necessarily doing the wrong thing. Doing nothing is just as damaging to your business operations. Apathy drains profits. Lack of engagement lessens productivity. The more employees there are, the easier it is for you to say, “Somebody else will do it.”

Take personal responsibility for acting. Make it your business to do the right thing regardless.

Second, depend on someone always watching you.

Ransom didn’t realize his right-thing action would be so public.

At work, when you face an ethical decision, assume someone is watching you. Odds are good they are regardless of whether you see them or not.

If you catch yourself saying, “No one will ever know,” you’re headed down a slippery ethical slope that leads away from doing the right thing. Be assured—someone will know. At the least, you will know. Knowledge of deliberate, unethical behavior erodes your core values, maliciously rearranges your priorities, and removes power from your unique contribution to a profitable business.

Depend on someone always watching you.

Third, deal with consequences either way.

When you do the right thing regardless while fully aware that someone is watching you, you create consequences that are far easier to deal with later. Ransom’s greatest challenge was dealing with all of the attention that comes with being dubbed a “hero.”

When you do nothing or the wrong thing and hope no one sees you, your consequences are extremely difficult to explain away when they come to light. And be assured they will.

The business you work for eventually displays your unethical choices either through loss of customers, key employees, or critical supplier relationships—all of which lead to lower profits.

You deal with consequences from every decision. Choose easier outcomes to live with.

Work Positive with Ransom Duel today. Do the right thing regardless. Depend on someone always watching you. Deal with consequences either way.

America’s Backbone Weekly: Start Planning

Gaining a Competitive Advantage

By SooJi Min for America’s Backbone Weekly

In order to succeed in today’s competitive global marketplace, small business owners need to foster an environment that promotes creativity and innovation in the workplace. Following are four steps that any small business owner can take to get the creative juices flowing, no matter the industry.

Create Space

First and foremost, the human brain needs time and space to put ideas together in novel ways. When we are overscheduled or overwhelmed with the pressure of too much to do, we tend to operate on auto pilot, doing the same things the same way day after day. According to Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Janice Marturano, author of Finding the Space to Lead and founder and executive director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, the number-one thing that gets in the way of innovation is space. “We all have a to-do list that is miles long, a day that is packed with meetings,” says Marturano. “We need to cultivate the ability to have open space to allow the mind to be creative.” Productivity may actually increase as team members feel less overwhelmed and overscheduled.

Marturano suggests a few simple steps to create more space in the day. “It’s as simple as learning to train the mind to attend to the feeling of feet walking down the hallway from meeting to meeting,” she says, “or noticing while sitting at a meeting while the body is there but mind isn’t, and then using some physical sensation (breath, feeling of feet on the ground) to bring your mind back to the present moment.” Otherwise, the default mode is to “spend most of our mental energy ruminating or remembering the past, planning or worrying about the future,” says Marturano, which “zaps both your physical and mental energy.”

Promote Failure

Another important element is to create a corporate culture that tolerates mistakes. Behind every major success story, chances are that you will find many tales of false starts and even abject failures. “Failure is part of the creative process,” says Robert Bradford, CEO of Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, based in Waterford, Vt. “In business, you want to figure out how to fail cheaply and quickly and move on to next thing.” You want to feel secure trying new things and not be afraid of negative consequences. “The human brain is trained – going back 20,000 years – to always look for threat or what they are afraid might happen,” adds Bradford. “That’s not what creativity is about.”

Reward the Effort

Instead, be sure to reinforce a creative and collaborative culture by rewarding team members for taking risks and for cultivating an open mind. “It’s a really good idea to recognize when people contribute ideas and make them feel part of the team,” says Bradford, “even if it’s only a symbolic gesture. Every time that a reward is received, it stimulates dopamine.” Scientists have found that dopamine in the brain functions as a neurotransmitter and is directly related to motivation and behavior. Dopamine makes you feel good so that as a result, you are inclined to do more of that behavior or activity.

Look Outside the Box

Last but not least, business owners need to look outside of their industry for inspiration. “Chances are that if a business is only doing what their competitors are doing, they won’t innovate,” says Bradford. “You need to get ideas from outsiders that will stimulate conditions and connections that don’t normally occur. Really creative ideas are outside of the normal connection space.”

Indeed, in a recent study conducted by Harvard Business School, researchers recruited hundreds of roofers, carpenters and inline skaters to contribute ideas on increasing workers’ use of safety gear. A panel of experts evaluated their suggested solutions based on novelty and usefulness. The finding: “Each group was significantly better at thinking of novel solutions for the other fields than for its own,” and the farther the distance from their own field, the greater the novelty of the idea.

If you are serious about getting ahead of your competition, create a collaborative culture of creativity in the workplace by creating space, allowing failure, giving rewards and looking beyond your own industry for ideas.

SooJi Min is a freelance writer and nonprofit executive based in Ann Arbor, MI. She has written on small business topics for Crain’s, Imagination Publishing and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend in most of the U.S. We “lose an hour” to gain more sunlight at the end of the day.

So how do you deal with this lost hour? And all the other lost hours of productivity at work?

Here are 3 Tips to Gain Time:

Priorities

Dr. Stephen Covey was fond of saying, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

What are your priority tasks and activities that contribute the most to your productivity and profitability? Once you identify them, you gain time because your focus sharpens. You consciously aim for achieving these priorities in a timely manner that keeps your business moving forward.

Your priorities grow roots in the unique contribution you bring to your team. You do your part. Diversity among teammates unifies around these priorities with each member utilizing her/his different skill set to give wings to the company’s mission. Productive, profit-enriching activities are priorities.

Productivity

A Work Positive lifestyle coaches you to do more in an hour than many of your peers accomplish in a month. One of the keys to this productivity leverage is to understand how to set boundaries, especially around technology.

The intrusive nature of always-on, how-do-I-escape technology leaps with ease over the necessary boundaries for creating maximum productivity today. To be more productive so you generate more profit, you must choose to erect boundaries like turning off your automatic updates and notifications, setting appointments with yourself to return emails and voicemails, using the DND and off buttons regularly, and other such attention-defining activities. Multi-tasking is a myth. Intuitively you know it. Doing something consciously to rein it in is your next step.

Profit

The obvious profit metric is money. More money equals better priorities and productivity.

What about other metrics? A less tangible and yet important profit is your personal satisfaction with a job well done that calls upon your native talents. This profit insures your continuing emotional engagement with your work.

Also, you profit from work activities that align with and give expression to your core values. You benefit from opportunities that give expression to your integrity or other such values.

Such profits that grow from your productivity and priorities prompt you to gain time to invest with your family and friends. And that’s how you create your Work Positive lifestyle!

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Positive Success Coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.GetPositive.Today.

Starting up a business can be a thrilling challenge at the outset and a satisfying pursuit under any circumstance. However, once the novelty of doing it for yourself wears off, real world problems can quickly start to squeeze the life out of any fledgling business.

So, what should you do if your company is facing up to a financial crisis? Here are six steps you can take to improve your company’s prospects.

1 – Take a step back

As an entrepreneur or business boss in any situation it can be extremely tough to separate yourself from the day-to-day machinations of your organisation. This is perfectly natural and understandable but if you really want to give yourself the best chance of turning around a bad situation, you need to take a step back and gain a broader perspective on what’s going wrong.

2 – Consider your restructuring options

If your company is really facing a dire scenario and the prospect of going out of business is becoming all-too real then you should be looking carefully at how restructuring options might help. It could be that some very tough decisions will need to be a made but survival in some form is generally preferable to being wound up altogether.

3 – Liquidate unneeded assets

Turning around a business facing insolvency generally requires a clear focus on determining which aspects of a particular operation are essential and which are expendable. Those that fall into the latter category should be liquidated as soon as possible in order that funds might be raised and cash flows improved.

4 – End non-essential relationships

Letting go of dedicated members of a workforce will generally be the toughest aspect of implementing a turnaround plan but it often has to be done in order to give a struggling company a chance to survive and recover. Here again the issue is deciding whose contributions to your business are truly essential and making decisions on that basis. This applies to contracted suppliers as well as to any full or part time employees.

5 – Assess your financing options

However dire your company’s financial situation might seem, there remains a good chance that you can raise funds and reinvest for the future. Accessing finance under these circumstances might not be easy but there are a growing number and variety of alternative finance providers around that specialise in niche areas and helping troubled companies avoid disaster.

6 – Investigate your repurchasing options

If your company reaches the point at which it looks very likely that creditors will continue to pursue their debts then directors can sometimes acquire certain assets belonging to the business. It is important to tread carefully and get solid advice from experts in these areas but it is possible for company directors to retrieve assets from their failing companies with a view to re-establishing a similar operation further down the line.

Seeing a company you’ve fought hard to create and develop fail can be heart-breaking for entrepreneurs but it is, unfortunately, a not uncommon outcome. Business bosses can help themselves to make the best of these testing situations though by following the above steps, getting good advice from the right parties and generally keeping a cool head as matters unfold.

Mark Halstead joined the Begbies Traynor Group at the creation of Red Flag Alert and is now in his 10th year with the business. Having worked at companies across the financial services industry, he is now a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing and an expert in a variety of fields.

Article Contributed by Ameera Tabassum

Are you among business owners who believe risk management culture is just an over-hyped theory?

If yes, let me help you understand why you may be mistaken. There are solid reasons why you should propagate good risk management culture in an organization.

For instance, analyse the recent financial crisis. Significant losses ensued from ignorance, negligence and greed. Had an effective risk management culture been in place, at least a few big names would have survived the economic catastrophe.

Organizations can no longer shut their eyes to risk management, instead it should be perceived as the first rule of thumb and made part and parcel of projects and business operations. 

The question I am often asked is, “Why emphasize risk culture?”

The answer is that by implementing an effective risk management culture, significant financial benefits accrue. Some of the major characteristics of a robust risk management culture include:

• Providing an efficient governance system
• Stating the roles and responsibilities of senior managers clearly
• Encouraging constant improvements
• Delivering a transparent and timely escalation process
• Promoting dedicated leadership and guidance
• Supporting learning from errors

Organizations deficient in these risk management habits can encounter significant problems; look at the bankruptcy and buyout of major financial institutions during the 2008 recession. A risk management culture creates visible improvement in operational risk factors, especially people. A positive attitude towards risks management should become part of the staff’s attitude. 

How to achieve a strong risk management culture?

Lead by example!

Leadership is a vital component in implementing an effective risk management culture. It is not like forcing down a bitter pill. Leaders should gradually build appetite for a risk management culture through communication, and by sharing and breaking silos – which have always been organizational barriers, leading to trade-offs between departments and employees, management and the board.

A powerful risk management culture can be achieved when the business leaders understand the significance of risk management and permeate the knowledge across the whole organization efficiently.

Further, a risk management culture can be expanded by:

• Facilitating smooth internal communication
• Involving stakeholders in business decisions
• Communicating and informing employees about the tools and techniques used for risk management in the organization

Every organization is distinctly shaped by its attributes, strengths and weaknesses. The culture of risk management should be made to echo the organizational context or be improvised for better results.

Developing a risk culture is a difficult task; cannot happen overnight. Only persistence and methodical approaches lead to a solid foundation and establish a capable risk culture later on.

I hope you enjoyed reading this introductory post on “Does your organization emphasise on risk culture”. In the follow up, we will look at more critical subjects like “How to Measure Risk Culture?” and “Case Studies on Impact Created by Risk Culture”.

About the Author

Ameera Tabassum is an ACCA  Affiliate. She has diversified experience working as Business Process Consultant for an  Audit solution company in the Uk. She has over 4 years of experience in  Erm risk management solutions  and as a practicing manager of Business analysts successfully executing several projects in terms of Risk management strategies, ORM Software solutions and Governance risk compliance.