With all the people and organizations who want time and money from us, how can we decide which people and organizations to spend our time and money with? And, let’s face it, we are constantly inundated with those wanting our time and money. Be it a course, an event, a book to read, a seminar, […]
Archive | Planning
The Covid Hangover
In response to Covid, the federal government rolled out a number of programs to help stabilize the economy. The most well known was the PPP, or Payroll Protection Program of loans, most of which were forgiven, making them grants. PPP loans probably did protect payrolls and it certainly put a lot of money into business […]
Are We Going to Have a Recession?
Are we going to have a recession? Of course, the only question is when. Here’s my prediction: It has already started. The statistics that will confirm this are a lagging indicator; we’ll learn this summer that it started in May. I wouldn’t be so sure but the Fed’s efforts to stop inflation seem to guarantee […]
What Are We Hiring the Office to Do?
What are we hiring the office to do? That’s a question asked by the CEO of a large investor in commercial office spaces. That’s also a question that CEOs of businesses large and small are asking right about now. Proponents of going back to pre-pandemic conditions are arguing that we are hiring the office to […]
Post Pandemic, Part 2
This is the second part of my thoughts on post-pandemic workplaces, management, company structures and company cultures. Last week I gave you my general thoughts, including my recommended approach to business owners trying to figure out the combination of going back to pre-pandemic norms while adopting new approaches learned over the last 15 months. Briefly, […]
Post Pandemic, Part 1
We’re coming out of the pandemic and it seems to be happening very fast. For business owners, what’s next? The consensus is that the pandemic acted as an accelerant to trends that were already underway. What the pandemic did was accelerate those trends about ten years in the space of about 15 months. To me, […]
This Time of Year
This time of year, we businesspeople are typically working on next year’s budget and year-end tax planning. During December 2020, most of us are adding Covid concerns and PPP Loan Forgiveness to our usual year-end list. Let’s briefly talk about each of these items. Budgets While Covid brought a whole new world for many, and […]
Another Great Relearning
Tom Wolfe, the author of The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff and many other bestsellers, once wrote an article called The Great Relearning. It was about how societies sometimes need to relearn things that have collectively been forgotten. One example was San Francisco’s health clinics in 1968. Hippies were challenging the status quo […]
The Future Revisited: The Outcomes of Increasing Productivity
I remember when I was in teenager (a long time ago), hearing a pundit say, “If productivity gains continue, by the 1980s we’ll all be looking around for something to do.” That didn’t happen, of course, except it sort of did. The factories of North America were mostly automated long ago. The computer revolution that […]
RMA Predictions on Recession
I’ve been a member of the board of directors of the local RMA chapter for many years. RMA is Risk Management Associates, the national bankers’ organization. It has been around for over one hundred years and was know for most of its existence as Robert Morris Associates, Robert Morris being George Washington’s banker and the […]