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A Challenging Project
By Steve Epner |
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| This
is not unusual, but the solution was one of the best. A new system
was being
installed at a small operation. The “ladies” who ran
the office were very leery of any new
fangled computers and liked all of their old papers and especially
the Address-O-Graph
machine that labeled all of their mailings. |
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The Accident
By Steve Epner |
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| I just had an unbelievable experience. I hope you
never have to go through the same
kind of night. |
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Are
You In The “Under
20 %” Average?
By Steve Epner |
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| According to most surveys, businesses use less than
15 percent of the features and
functions that are available on their computer systems. While this
is one of the largest
financial and time investments that most companies make, most owners
are pitifully unaware
of what can be done. It is a tremendous waste of valuable resources. |
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Assessing The Situation
By Steve Epner |
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| This is the time of the year when we all look back
and forward. We look at what has
been accomplished and forward to what we want to do next. For some,
it is a painful
process. Others find it lots of fun. Either way, it is necessary
and worthwhile. |
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Defining Vision, Managing Change
By Steve Epner |
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| Many
of us have created a mission statement at some point in our business
career.
Some wrote a tag line or some other short explanation of what they
did. Neither is easy to do – concisely – or in such a way that they are easy to
understand. |
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The End Game
By Steve Epner |
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| We all hate to admit it, but some of us are getting
more mature, grayer, slower or just
plain older. It comes at you from every side. Listening to a kid
explaining to another why we
call pushing buttons “dialing.” Or winning a trivia
game because you remember that the “Enter”
key used to be called “Return” until there were not
enough people left who remembered
typewriters. |
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Eliminating Redundancy In Business
By Steve Epner |
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| I was
thinking about all of the changes I have seen in my career. Since
writing my first
program in FORTRAN (Illinois Institute of Technology, 1965) to
sending presentations over the
Internet, information technology has been fast paced. There is
always something new and
exciting.
As I look forward, the future continues to look great. What other
profession will allow
you to be at the leading edge of new concepts and opportunities?
Think about it. |
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Getting “On
Board”
By Steve Epner |
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| “Hey
Steve, how would you like to be on a Board of Directors? I am
part of the
recruiting committee for …” Have you ever gotten one
of these calls? I have had a few. How
often do you want to do it, but know you shouldn’t, but say
yes anyway? |
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How to Get Through The Business Exit Maze
Part 1: Strategic Planning
By Barry Worth |
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| As business owners mature, begin reflecting on their careers, and deciding what they want to do with the rest of their lives, they begin thinking about their greatest asset. This is of course, the business they've started and built throughout the course of their entire business career. In order to assess if you are ready to exit your business, here are a few questions to consider. |
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How to Get Through The Business Exit Maze
Part 2: Succession Planning
By Barry Worth |
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| When deciding to sell a business your first step is to know if you are financially and emotionally ready to part with the important asset you built. If you aren't ready to exit, you can still think long-term and begin assessing your current business situation for later on. If you have made your decision to exit the business and approximately when you would like to exit, it is time to select the people to work with and start the planning process. |
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How to Get Through The Business Exit Maze
Part 3: Implementation
By Barry Worth |
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| Now that you have various pieces of the puzzle in place and the company is ready to be put on the market to be sold - what is the process? |
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I’m
Back To School
By Steve Epner |
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| Many
of you have already heard that I am back in school. Purdue University
has accepted
me in the Industrial Technology program where I will be working
on a thesis about the
changes technology will be forcing in the Supply Chain over the
next decade.
I hope to share some insight into what I am learning so you can
learn through my
experiences. |
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I Hope I Offended You
By Steve Epner |
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| Some
people do not like to be compared to cave dwellers. If you are
one of our
readers who were offended, that is OK. When I work with corporations
around the world, my
task is not to make them feel good about where they are, but to
make them uncomfortable. My
goal is to challenge their current thinking. |
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If You Cannot Measure It, You
Cannot Manage It
By Steve Epner |
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Why do we hire and pay
managers? This is not a very difficult question. Yet, we get
many different answers when we ask the question at seminars. The
answer is really very
simple. Managers get paid to move numbers. |
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Juggling Business AND Pleasure
By Steve Epner |
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| Maybe
you made resolutions at the start of a new year – maybe
you didn’t. The time
has come to evaluate your actions – are you juggling business
and pleasure well? |
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Kiss Is Not Stupid
By Steve Epner |
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| There is an old expression which is often used to
help us find answers to complex
problems. It is called the KISS principle. Many people believe
that KISS stands for Keep It
Simple, Stupid. To me, people are our most important asset. We
are not stupid by nature and
I for one resent the implication. |
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Managers Magic Vision
By Steve Epner |
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| Great ideas come from the most unlikely places. Most
of us are blind to opportunities
to improve our organizations. We are so close to the situation
that we cannot see the forest
for the trees. |
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Plan Your Work And Work Your
Plan
By Steve Epner |
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| At the end of every year, we plan for the next year.
It was not always this way. There
were many years when I just kept doing the same old thing: hope
that business would stay
good. For many years that was so. |
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Resolutions Or Revolutions?
By Steve Epner |
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| So what resolutions do consultants make at the start
of a new year? The same old ones everyone else makes. But, maybe
this year should be different. Instead of making a long list of
resolutions you will not keep, how about selecting one REVOLUTION
you will work on? |
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The
RFP – Formal Or Informal?
By Steve Epner |
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| An RFP, or Request for Proposal, is a method by which
a customer can specify exactly
what they need to potential vendors. This standardized list helps
the customer ensure the
same information is requested from all vendors. |
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Retreats – Creating
An Environment For Success
By Steve Epner |
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| Meetings and retreats are used for many different
purposes. Sometimes they are to
inform a group about decisions that have been made. Other times
they are used to develop
the strategic or tactical questions that must be answered prior
to announcing results internally
or to the public. |
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Schools Do Not Teach What Managers
Need
By Steve Epner |
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| Schools are supposed to be places that teach and
encourage creativity. However, my
experience suggests that we do not meet that goal. There are many
good things that we can
get from schools. The problem is that there seem to be as many
bad lessons. I am not just
considering problems related to violence, drugs, or other social
ills. Our school systems teach
and reward students for the wrong things. |
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The Search For A Supply Team
By Steve Epner |
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| Once again, the doomsayers are predicting the end
of distribution. They believe that
distributors will finally be eliminated from the supply channel.
It will not be accomplished by
some "underground" conspiracy of manufacturers trying
to go direct, however. This time, the
end is predicted to be coming at the hands of the Internet and
electronic commerce. Some
are convinced that manufacturers will openly sell directly to their
end customers. Guess what?
They already can -- and do. |
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Shake Up The Cob Webs
By Steve Epner |
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| If we don’t shake up the cob webs every once
in a while, the spiders will take over. I
have written often about the need to stay up to date. Now I am
doing something radical about
it. |
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So You Need A Consultant
By Steve Epner |
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| A consultant, goes one common definition, is someone
more than 30 miles from home.
Consultants do travel, and it is also a fact, to the chagrin of
the true professional, that to
become a consultant, one only needs to buy business cards and stationery.
But what is
missing in the popular image of a consultant—and what is
most important—is that his
assistance can either benefit or destroy an operation. |
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The Supply Chain No Longer Works
By Steve Epner |
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Think about the term Supply Chain. What picture does
it create? A set of loosely
connected, independent links that touch each other in a limited
fashion. Plus, where the
connections do occur, the links often rub each other the wrong
way. When you think about it,
it does reflect real life. |
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The
Supply Team – The
Future Of Distribution Has Arrived
By Steve Epner |
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Here we go again. As has happened so many times before,
the doomsayers are
predicting the end of distribution. They believe that distributors
will finally be eliminated from
the supply channel. This time, the villain is not some “underground” conspiracy
of
manufacturers trying to go direct. |
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Travel
War Stories
By Steve Epner |
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| Have you ever had one of those days? I just did.
It started out great and went down
hill quickly. I am sure this will be funny someday, but right now
... |
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