The Leadership Storm

Our next Enron or WorldCom could come from within government. The fact government sets many of the ethical standards for business means they must have a high standard themselves. It appears those standards are slipping.

The Ethics Resource Center's National Government Ethics Survey (NGES) shows that nearly two thirds (63%) of local government employees said they observed at least one type of misconduct during the reported year. Local government also had the highest rate of workers who witnessed misconduct but did not report it. The combined rate of state and federal workers who stated they had witnessed ethics violations was 57%. The 2007 study did not show improvement over the previous study. This should sound alarms for both government and business.

(To download the full report visit http://www.ethics.org)

The Value of Assessments

Are you currently using assessments to assist you in qualifying candidates for your organization? Understanding human nature and how the potential candidate would best fit within your organization's culuture can save you thousands of dollars if not more.

There are assessments that cover a variety of areas. In some instances you may want to use more than one. Here's a brief list of the areas that assessments cover:

Attitude, Behavior and Communication Styles, Business Motivators, Corporate Culture, Conflict Resolution, Computer Abuse, Customer Service, Honesty, Integrity, Job Fit Benchmarks, Leadership Development Skills, Reliability, Sales Skills, Substance Abuse, Succession Planning, Team Development, Training Needs, and Workplace Hostility.

There are many valid tools available. It's best to have a qualified expert to interpret the results. Just as I recommend that you as a leader interpret your organization's values and value to your employees.

If you need any assistance email me: assessments at thatvalueguy.com

Technologies Leadership Challenge

I've been speaking with many folks lately and doing some research. It seems that spam email has doubled in the past year. The average business user has in excess of 50 emails per day. The average user takes approximately 2 minutes per email. That's one hour and forty minutes per day. The average worker works 260 days per year. This equates to 15 days of lost productivity each year on average.

What if you could cut this in half? How much could it save your business in lost productivity? How much could your business grow with 15 more days of productive work from each employee?

This is why I've created a program to help businesses work efficiently with email. Some of you may not know that I've been working in the technology field for over 10 years. I like to think of myself as a recovering geek. As a former Microsoft Trainer, I know the value of productivity increases. As a businessman and consultant, I understand the financial performance impact this has.

How much will you save this year?