You work hard serving and acquiring customers. Then one day, someone posts a negative comment about your business at Amazon, Yelp, or Consumer Reports. How will you respond? The growth of online communication challenges how we deal with customer complaints. Ten years ago, it could be fun to deal with customer complaints. The customer would call you on the telephone or demand to see you in person to complain. I enjoyed turning an angry stranger into a loyal customer, or even a friend, by giving him or her solutions. Back then, every customer had an identity. Today, the complaining customer is more anonymous—and often more hostile. The complainer might even prefer to vent anonymously—and anonymity can enable someone to be more comfortable when posting negative comments. Your initial response might be to call the online complainer a coward or troll. You might think, “This review is totally unfair!” If you remain angry, then the best response might be no response at all—at least until your anger subsides. Either way, we should deal with an online complaint quickly. Let’s explore seven ways to respond: 1.) “First, take a step back,” suggests Hannah Tighe of Chatterbox Social Media. The point is for you to remove negative emotions from your response. 2.) Be polite and apologize. “If the complaint is legitimate, then they need a sincere apology and politeness even if they are not being polite in the moment,” says Tighe. 3.) Give them an opportunity to contact you offline to resolve their complaint. The complainer might not cooperate, but offline communication is more powerful than online communication. With quicker resolution time, opportunities for productive dialogue increase. 4.) “Call them or email them directly,” suggests publicist Jennifer Sherlock of Jenna Communications. “Show them that you care!” 5.) “Let others online see how you are resolving the complaint,” continues Sherlock. “We craft messages for clients and use the negative situation as a real-life marketing opportunity to let others know how good our clients are at what they do, even if the complainer continues to complain.” 6.) Offer the customer their money back, a discount on a future purchase, or a replacement to enable them to feel better about your business. 7.) Set up an online alert system such as Google Alerts to stay on top of online complaints and manage your brand. It’s OK for a business to make mistakes and be vulnerable. Businesses are made up of people, after all, and people aren’t perfect. Moreover, do you really trust all the five-star reviews and glowing testimonials when you consider making a purchase? We’ve become a bit jaded when reading testimonials, and we instinctively distrust the overly favorable ones. Observing how a business deals with a problem customer after a purchase is almost as important to me as the purchasing decision. At least I can feel more confident that if a problem surfaces after the sale, the business will take care of problem customers responsibly. ——————————————————————————————————————— Thank you to Jennifer Sherlock http://jennacommunications.com/ and Hannah Tighe http://chatterboxsocialmedia.com/ for your suggestions to help us better respond to negative online comments.

Did you ever have to work with a person that you were mad at? Years ago, I heard men threaten to take their problem outside at work, and on occasion I’ve heard women literally scream at each other in the office. But that was a long time ago. Obviously something needed to change about such extreme conflict. Today, we have become more politically-correct, judgmental, litigious—and for good reasons we’ve also become more guarded and careful. We learn from experience how to work with difficult people even if it is us that needs the work. But other times simply broadening the time perspective and focusing on the bigger picture of our work relationship is all we need to do.            

What about when you are mad at your business partner, family member, or spouse at work? There are many articles and other blog posts written  about working with difficult coworkers at work or working with a difficult boss. The focus here will be on business partners who are family  members, ones that become angry at one another and find it difficult to work together.  Conflict with business partners often becomes more  difficult when our business partner is also our family member, best friend, or spouse. Emotions become heightened and conflict resolution  frustrates us based primarily on the commitment to the relationship. When the business is not making enough money, or even losing money, it’s like being on a sports team that’s losing. Disagreements and fights  happen out in the open for all to see.  Even when a business makes money, business partners sometimes fight over power alone—which is very  awkward for everyone involved. What can we do in these angry business situations? Here are some tips to work out problems with business partners and family members:

• Have written agreements. Agreements have many names, but most of them can be broken down into either an operating or shareholder agreement. An operating agreement addresses how the partnership will function to operate the business. A shareholders’ agreement is intended to clarify the ownership of the business and what happens in the event of partnership transitions, partial ownership valuation or a complete company sale, to name a few. Written agreements alone will not solve all of your partnership problems, but they sure make conflict resolution easier when they’re well-written. They’re good to have to establish understanding, but you should also be wary. Try to learn how to work out problems before referencing written agreements. From my experience, when written agreements are referenced and quoted, the partnership may have already begun dissolving.
• Have a planning process. Notice that I did not say have a plan or even a One Hour Business Plan. A business plan needs to be updated at regular intervals, such as every 6 or 12 months. A quality business planning process, on the other hand, allows time to solve problems openly and capitalize on business opportunities. The absence of a regular business planning process makes conflict resolution more “one-off,” emotionally charged, and less efficient. If you don’t believe me, try a business planning process with some problem solving included for a while.
• Remember the goals for the business. Most business partners are going to fight at some point in the relationship. So hopefully they’ve learned to fight fairly. When the inevitable conflict arises, sometimes it helps to resolve conflict by simply keeping your eyes on the prize—which are the goals for the business. That can be goals like to make x dollars, relocate the firm, or terminate a longtime employee, for example. What are the business goals here? Share them with all parties involved.
• Critique yourself objectively the best you can. Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Most people are naturally good at criticizing others and laying blame on someone else. We are quick to point out whoever has wronged us. However, how many of us look at ourselves when we are in conflict with another? Ask the simple question, what can I do better to help resolve this conflict? It might be enough to take at least part of the responsibility for the conflict and move toward an amicable resolution.
• Broaden the time perspective. When we are mad at somebody, our relationship focus is often very much in the moment, and that can be good for focus. Other times, it might help us to broaden the time horizon for resolving the conflict. We might have years invested in a productive business/working relationship. Is it worth giving that up over this particular conflict? Family members in a business conflict need to remember that their family relationship is far more important than the business relationship. If we think beyond the present situation of the relationship and remember our commitment to the relationship itself, then we are often enabled to be in a much better frame of mind to solve our problem.
• Other tips to help you get along. At planned meetings, discuss openly what is bothering each of you. Recognize what you cannot agree on and agree to disagree. During any communication, keep it informative and logical. Try your best to replace unproductive emotions at work with logic and reasoning. And by all means agree to stay positive.

When business partners become angry at one another, it creates a serious business challenge. When the business partners are also family members, best friends, or a spouse, then the challenges rise to new levels of sensitivity and difficulty. Before the anger boils over, we can do some things to help resolve the conflict. Using tools such as written agreements, a planning process, goal stating, self-inspection, and broadening the time perspective of the relationship can all help us out of difficult business partnership situations. While there are other tips for working with angry business partners, these are the tools that I have used most often. Drop me a note (at john at planfoundations dot com) and let me know what you have done to resolve conflict with a business partner at work.     ^{Copyright © John McAdam 2015. All Rights Reserved}.

Do you ever get through your day and think, “I could have gotten so much more done today if I had an assistant? I feel so unproductive.” How about when you look at your to-do list and feel like you could definitely leverage your time better? How can you tell that you might need an assistant? The typical signs that you might need an assistant often include: overbooking your calendar, missing appointments, suffering from email overload, passing on business opportunities, or feeling overloaded with stress. Don’t you wish you had an assistant to take care of some or most of that for you?   The decision on whether or not to hire an assistant is an important one. Choosing wisely with proper planning will make you more productive and wealthier over time. Choose an assistant without thinking the decision through and planning, and guess what? You throw gasoline on the fire of unproductivity—and you will most likely spend money without earning a profitable return. What are the important factors when deciding whether or not to hire an assistant? Expectations & Goals– Arguably the most important factor in your hiring decision. A little planning can go a long way here, whether it’s writing a One-Hour Business Plan or just a simple job description. If you’re trying to leverage your assistant’s time to make you more money, then you need to hire someone who can support your business development efforts and sales efforts. One candidate might be better suited to conduct Internet sales research, while another might focus on administrative work. If you need business development leverage, make sure you hire for that skill set. If you fail to change your behavior to follow up on the assistant’s preparation work, then you as the business owner might make the whole process fail. It’s hard for us business owners to change our work activities sometimes, but it’s necessary to ensure a successful addition to your team.   Virtual or In-Person Assistant – If you have enough office space, an in-person assistant might be best for you. Consider the talent pool for assistants in your local area; if you’re not in a large city, it may be limited. Part-Time vs. Full-Time –How much assistant can you afford? Some business owners use part-time employment as a test before committing to the expense and risk of taking on a full-time employee. The decision often comes down to money more than to work requirements. Be careful not to overestimate the productivity gains, cost savings, or sales leverage an assistant will provide you. Be conservative with your estimates. Domestic vs. International– It is true that lower-wage assistants are available outside the US. But if your assistant is interfacing with your customers, then English-language and cultural skills become very important in who you’re hiring. If your assistant will be doing primarily back-office tasks such as research, supplier management, and scheduling, consider an international assistant. Personality– This might sound obvious, but the personalities of a business owner and an assistant must blend well for the relationship to work, even more so than other work relationships. They must enjoy each other’s company and anticipate one another’s needs for the working relationship to function optimally. Work Style– A quality assistant should be able to know what the boss is doing right now, as well as anticipating his or her future needs. Work style fit is important. Do you need someone who can operate without specific instructions? Are your work tasks very routine and repetitive, without a lot of thinking involved? Does one of you prefer to work on difficult tasks in the morning, the other in the afternoon?  Perhaps you prefer to manage your employees’ work closely, but your potential assistant detests being micromanaged. Using an Agency vs. Hiring Independently– if you are a trial-and-error person by nature or anticipate having to work with more than one assistant until you find the right fit, consider using an agency. It will cost you a little more, but will save you a lot of time. If you are mostly clear on what you want in an assistant, hiring independently might be the best way to proceed. There certainly are a lot of factors to consider when hiring an assistant. The point is not to make it complicated, but to consider your needs and those of your business. If hiring an assistant is right for you, do yourself a favor and consider these important factors.  Even a little careful planning can go a long way to increase your odds of a successful hire. Setting expectations and goals for your assistant—including what you want to accomplish—is a logical place to start. Let us know what you think.       Copyright © John McAdam 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Did you ever finish your workday and wonder, “What happened to my time? Where did it go?” One of the hardest parts about being a small business owner is to manage you. We often ignore managing ourselves. Let’s face it; one of the reasons many of us own small businesses is that we despise being managed. Otherwise we might pursue a work life of predictability in a large corporation. However, even in small business, we need to hold ourselves accountable for the appropriate use of our time. Otherwise, increasing amounts of time slips away faster and faster. Consequently, if you have ever asked yourself how you could manage your time better, then by all means read on—it should be worth your time.     Time management is defined as “the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity.” Sounds kind of boring—until we learn more: the threats to our time management, a few time management tools, and how we can improve our time management.       What are the threats to your time management? – Email       Telephone        Travel       Problem Customers -Absent or inadequate prioritization to task demands – Redundant and/or repetitious activities       Poor listening -Inadequate rest for body and mind to perform optimally – Distractions and/or interruptions       Disorganization – Procrastination       Personal Problems       Others When you look at the aforementioned threats to your business time, what jumps out at you? Email is the biggest complaint I hear today. It used to be telephones that interrupted us, but now email has taken over as the main channel of communication in business. It’s not the same for all businesses though, particularly businesses where you’re not staring at a computer screen.  Some of you might feel overwhelmed by all of the above, depending on what’s happening in your business. The key is to simply take the time to identify your largest time threats currently. What are the common time management tools available for business owners? Most people think that a quick fix solution exists. It doesn’t. I could write about different theories of time management such as ABC Analysis (ranking by importance), Pareto’s Rule (80 vs. 20), The Eisenhower Method (unimportant vs important), but they all drift off of the mark eventually in our struggle to manage our time at work. We could consider various software tools to help us mange time. This can be useful in certain professions, particularly if we are billing by the hour, but not for all of us. Plus, managing the software and data seem to take up a lot of time, ironically. The time management tools that stand the test of time (sorry for the pun) are tried, true, and more practical and tactical in nature. The best tools have relevance no matter how we manage our time—such as our appointment calendars (Outlook, Day-Timer, Palm Pilot, etc.), the clock in the room, or a time plan of activities, etc. The point is to track your activities by time segment and plan to some degree how you are going to best use your time. Other tips for managing time include:

• Hire or outsource your low-skill work. If you have too much to do and not enough time, something must be done. Have other people complete the tasks that you can most readily hire and teach and monitor their work.
• Plan your day comfortably and watch it comfortably. Planning the day in 15-minute increments will drive anyone crazy. Instead, plan in increments of 20 minutes, a whole hour, or a few hours at a time, and monitor your performance without annoying yourself.
• Manage your interruptions – these are inevitable, so plan for them by making time for interruptions.
• Take care of your body and mind – allow yourself to replenish your body and mind regularly or one or both will eventually shut down on you. Proper relaxation now promotes productivity later.
• Humor is undervalued in business to relieve stress!

If you have not already, you will eventually stop and wonder where your time went during your business day. If you are curious and want to understand the threats to your time, keep a piece of paper, or electronic notepad, ready and keep track of the threats to your time management. The more recurring threats might surprise you.  Whatever time management tools you decide to use, note that no one time management tool works for everybody in all phases of entrepreneurial or business life. Only you can find the best time management system that works for you and where you are now. If you have a tip or suggestion for the rest of us, don’t forget to share it through a reply or email. We definitely appreciate your time.       Copyright © John McAdam 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Ah, fall… my favorite time of year on the east coast—crisp fall mornings followed by gentle afternoon sunshine. For me, these weather changes provide a sign that a new business year looms around the corner. And it’s also time to do some high-level business planning, or at least to start the process before it’s too late. I try to avoid those crammed plans that some of us inevitably face. Have you ever waited until your banker or investor asked you for your business plan and not been ready? Not fun—and it’s not like the author of The One-Hour Business Plan would ever do that! The point is, to start planning the process of business planning. In other words, (and as strange as it might sound) “planning for your plan.” Some questions that you might want to ask yourself to get started include:

• What do I want my business to achieve next year? This is more than just about money, sales, and profit objectives. Here we want to dream big about what could happen—while keeping our feet on the ground with a reality check. There is nothing like planning for your dream and making it happen.
• What information does my staff, management team, or subcontractors need to know about my business goals? One of the purposes of planning is to communicate with a variety of people. Think about who needs to know what. Normally we need help to achieve our larger goals. It helps to consider how these people can contribute to completing our goals. If there are any potential issues we can foresee, we can begin planning ways to deal with them.
• What business metrics do I need to achieve? Before the bottom line, certain operations or marketing metrics can point the way to future bottom line performance. For example, producing a certain number of marketing leads for sales, or completing a specific number of product or service deliveries each month.
• What costs are associated with next year’s business initiatives?  One of the common mistakes that I see in business planning is for the planner to list a goal, describe what they want to do, then ignore the costs associated with achieving that goal. We can and should make financial estimates before obtaining quotes for our plans.
• What non-monetary resources do I need to accomplish my new business initiatives? Carving out time from employees’ schedules to work on a new business initiative can be one of the most precious resources that must be planned for (particularly in the eyes of your employees). Often another organization’s expertise becomes necessary to accomplish something new, such as a prototyping or engineering expertise. Identifying the internal personnel and external organizations required to achieve your goals will be worth planning for.
• What are we afraid of? The two most common forms of fear I see in business planning are either a fear of the unknown, or the feeling that they don’t have the time.  These fears can morph into roadblocks, bottlenecks, passive resistance, or uncooperativeness when ignored. We need to anticipate potential fears when we start planning, not just for the people around us, but also for ourselves.

A lot of other questions arise when we think about business planning. We won’t go into detail about them here. We simply try to address the most important questions that surface most frequently. A good conversation starting point might be: “How is my business finishing up this year, and what might my budget look like for next year?” For new business initiatives, it helps much more to anticipate roadblocks and bottlenecks during planning than during execution.  Other questions might come, up such as: What do my business stakeholders need from my business? Can we afford raises for the staff? How much will health insurance employee benefit costs affect my cost of doing business? OK, I’ll stop here. What? There’s more? No, that’s enough questions for now. The point is to start planning to plan for the new business year. It’s all about knowing what you want to accomplish in the year ahead. And remember to start planning for your plan now, at least on a high level (as the aforementioned questions prompt us). If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, then start planning by making a list of what you want from your business. The second tip is to anticipate the fears, roadblocks, and bottlenecks that you will most likely encounter from others or from yourself. If I hear “I am too busy!” one more time… Finally, make a sketch, outline, or list of what your business plan needs in order to make progress towards your goals. There, now you’ve planned for your plan. And it’s the beginning of fall. What better time to plan for next year?   Copyright © John J. McAdam 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Whether you’re in a team of 1 or a group of 1,000, an innovative workplace will become important for your business to maintain competitiveness in the long run.  An innovative workplace is also a benefit for your employees: it creates a fun and exciting place to work.  So If your business offers new products every year (or as often as your customers needs them), then you know that you probably maintain an innovative workplace. But what if you haven’t come out with a new product or service in years? Are you still innovative at work? How do you know? First, let’s look at solo entrepreneurs (or business owners who mostly work alone). Then, we’ll explore some characteristics of innovation in teams. If you work mostly alone and haven’t offered a new product or service to your customers in a while, then consider new avenues or new approaches Remember, if you don’t offer something new to your customers, your competitors will. Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: • Look for small innovative extensions of what you already do, as opposed to radically new ideas and inventions • Look at what your closest competitors are doing and see if you can do it better in any way • Ask some of your customers what they need. But remember: it takes more than one customer to establish a trend. • Regularly schedule some time to review your business innovation. This can be anywhere from weekly to monthly. You might need a colleague or advisor as a sounding board to obtain more objective feedback. • Consider a business partnership, strategic alliance or joint venture with another small firm that has unique skill sets. Together, the two of you might be able to offer something more powerful to the market than you can individually.         If you work with teams, your situation is a little different. A published study by Bledow, Frese, Anderson, Eres, & Farr (2009) analyzed over 150 research studies on innovation and suggested that several factors can contribute to the degree of innovation in organizations.  Based on this research, their insights about the characteristics of innovative workplaces include: • Regular idea generation meetings that focus on idea generation, not idea evaluation. • Idea exploration meetings to explore benefits and risks without managerial involvement. • Encouraging small incremental innovation rather than radical innovation. • Hiring people, particularity managers that will encourage improvements and innovation and be comfortable with the ambiguity, unknowns, and challenges therein. • Making innovation valued enough that it’s part of an employee’s performance criteria and is discussed at review time. • Supporting an innovative culture by minimizing strict and restrictive rules, guidelines, policies, or norms that get in the way of creativity. • Rewarding new and successful ideas. • Encouraging diversity in thinking to lead to greater innovations. • Practicing “Proactive Creativity” – a work culture method whereby a worker identifies a work-related problem then identifies new ways to solve the problem. This has been successful with production workers at manufacturers and with nurses in healthcare. A fun challenge exists when creating a more innovative workplace. Whether a solo entrepreneur or a large employer, ask yourself what you can do to make your workplace more innovative. By comparing characteristics of innovation between large and small organizations, we see some unique perspectives. For example, both types of organizations benefit from keeping innovations small, natural extensions of existing offerings—as opposed to a radically new invention. Also, small organizations rely more on studying customers and competitors, while the large organizations rely more on cooperating with each other.  Either way, there is something that each of us can do to make our workplace more innovative. How about you?  

• Keep discussions work-related. Stay focused on the job. This sounds easy until you start listening to an employee with a serious problem. When the conversation gets too personal or veers off-topic, bring it back to the employee’s job. Perhaps you can make temporary accommodations to working hours, schedule, or work location.
• Be consistent and fair. While we like to think that a closed-door conversation is private, sometimes the employees on the other side of the door want to know what’s going on. Been there? However you decide to help the employee, remember that other employees will notice and precedents will be established.
• Provide referral resources if appropriate. Large employers sometimes have employee-assistance programs for those who need counseling. Small employers should know what local government programs and community services might be available to the employee and make referrals as appropriate.
• Do not ignore the employee if the situation recurs.  If you decide to ignore the problem, it might affect other employees, get worse, or result in employee turnover. While it can be tempting to ignore non-work-related problems, they do tend to get worse. It’s better to address the situation immediately.

How about you? Do you have any useful tips for us when employees bring their personal problems to work? Let us know if you do—and don’t forget to share this article with someone who might need it.

Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are too busy to write the idea down. Maybe if we keep talking to others we can get someone else or even pay someone to write our big idea down for us. Then they can subject themselves to the questions, analysis, possible criticism or even the praise that follows.

Some of us think that there is a right way and a wrong way to write a simple business plan for a potentially great idea. What should be included? What if I am wrong? What is the format? Will not the plan be obsolete as soon as I write it down?

There is also fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of criticism from coming up with a bad idea that you once thought was great. Maybe even a fear of commitment. Fear that once the idea takes a written form that it will no longer be as good as it did when it was only in your head.

How long do you want your big business idea to stay in a dream state? For some of us, as long we can because it is a comfortable, cushy, and happy place. Most of us eventually want to move on and see if our big idea has any merit. Ultimately the business person within you realizes that the time has come to take our head out of the clouds, bring our business dream gently down to earth and see if we can make that dream a business reality.

Let’s address the concerns that we often hear in our own head. Yes, our plan for our big idea might be wrong to some degree and yes the plan should in fairness subjective itself to analysis, review, and criticism. But the criticism should be constructive if we approach the right people. This constructive criticism can make a good idea even better.

If you delegate or hire someone to write the big idea down for you, then you will lose some time. It takes time to communicate to someone else what is in your head. Plus, the real value of the planning process comes from the writing that clarifies the thoughts in your head through clearer words, illustrations, pictures, and numbers.

People often ask me for examples of business plans. “Do you have a business plan example?” they ask. It is not the right question. While examples can be useful, the business planning process itself is far more important than the format chosen for the business plan.  The process of writing, rewriting, rethinking, and the dialogue with people, particularly with customers, makes the written business planning process especially valuable.

Speaking of examples, we often compare business planning to a road map. This can be both a good and a bad comparison. The good part is that we have a guided path to follow with a map. However, in business planning the business terrain represented by the map changes, it is part of the process with which we need to accept and become more comfortable.  In extreme cases the business plan might be obsolete once we write it down, but most plans simply need a little tweaking to get our map and us back on track. There is something powerful in wring a plan down on paper. It makes us commit to the idea, the plan, and the process that focuses us while often melting our fears away.

How about you? What prevents you from putting more of your plans in writing? Feel free to share them in the comments section. I for one will enjoy reading them.