General business related things Jeff Cassman cares about
Episode 1968 Scott Adams PART2: Merry Christmas Everyone. Let’s Sip To That
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“Steady-on.” That’s what my friend Dave says when you ask, “How ya doin’?” Dave works at farmer-pace. He wouldn’t win any sprints. I’ve done a couple things with Dave, and I can testify that he’s steady. If you’re in a hurry, relax.
Usain Bolt, is the fastest human alive. Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner in the world. Usain would leave Eliud in the dust, if the race was short. If the race lasted two hours, Usain wouldn’t finish unless he slowed down.
If you want to finish a long race, slow down. Athletes can’t perform at 100% capacity 100% of the time, and you can’t either. For the record, saying you’re giving 110% is hyperbole. In reality, it’s impossible to give 101%.
Dave is steady-on because he goes to work before breakfast. Some days he works till after dinner. We visited once when some cows got out. We helped get them back in as the sun was going down.
Life is hard when you’re tired.
Fatigue lowers performance, even when you give it everything you’ve got. People who over-work get less done than people who understand pace.
Exhausted runners get left in the dust at the end of a race. They’re giving it everything they’ve got, but 100% effort isn’t much after fatigue sets in.
A two-hour task takes three hours when you’re tired.
What’s the most important thing for you today? If you don’t know your priorities, you’re wasting time and squandering talent.
Get to it. Don’t piddle around before doing important work.
#3. Fuel the machine.
Replenish energy before you run out of gas. Eat healthy snacks. Take breaks. Go home before you’re exhausted.
What comes to mind when you think about steady-on leadership?
Successful Time Management isn’t about Getting More Done
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Create employee benefits packages that attract top talent with Gusto, an all-in-one payroll, benefits, and human resource management software with licensed advisors to help craft the perfect packages for your business. For a limited time, save 25% for the first six months on the Gusto Plus plan.
Many employers think about the downside of offering employee benefits packages. These packages add to the company’s overhead and require a significant monetary investment. However, competitive benefits can help attract top talent, reduce employee attrition, and increase the company’s bottom line. This guide covers everything you need to know about successful employee benefits packages.
You don’t have to spend hours and endless paperwork creating and managing employee benefits packages. We’ve reviewed the best employee benefit plans for your convenience. Here, we feature the best software to automate benefits administration, including benefits eligibility, elections, and enrollment.
An employee benefits package refers to a collection of non-monetary compensation that an employee receives in addition to their base wage or salary. Typically, these benefits cover essential expenses that an employee would otherwise have to pay out of pocket. For example, most employee benefits packages include medical insurance and retirement savings.
Although often used interchangeably, there is a nuanced difference between employee benefits and perks. Benefits are considered essential, while perks are considered nice to have. For example, medical insurance is…
Content Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Projects for Brand Managers 18&63,h=A>>12&63,n=A>>6&63,o=63&A,u[l++]=i.charAt(a)+i.charAt(h)+i.charAt(n)+i.charAt(o);while(d 
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Noticing these sources of happiness makes people more optimistic and increases their wellbeing.
People who experience more moments of ‘felt love’ during the day have better mental wellbeing, research finds.
This type of love does not need to be romantic — it can come from all sorts of sources.
These moments include things like a friend asking after your health, receiving a nice compliment or getting heartfelt thanks from a colleague.
Brief experiences of connection and love in everyday life like these are also linked to greater optimism and purpose in life.
The study suggests that paying attention to small everyday moments of connection could improve happiness and optimism.
Dr Zita Oravecz, the study’s first author, said:
“We took a very broad approach when we looked at love.
Everyday felt love is conceptually much broader than romantic love.
It’s those micro-moments in your life when you experience resonance with someone.
For example, if you’re talking to a neighbor and they express concern for your well-being, then you might resonate with that and experience it as a feeling of love, and that might improve your well-being.”
The conclusions come from a study of 212 people who were prompted by their smartphones to report their felt love and wellbeing six times per day over four weeks.
The results showed that as the study went on people noticed more examples of love and connection in their own lives.
It could be that being asked to notice these moments increased people’s awareness.
Dr Oravecz said:
“It’s something that we’ve seen in the literature on mindfulness, when people are reminded to focus attention on positive things, their overall awareness of those positive things begins to rise.
Similarly, just by paying attention to those everyday moments of felt love, we may also increase our awareness of the overall positive aspects of love in our daily lives.
This effect replicates in both studies, implying that raising awareness of felt love in day-to-day life may itself be an intervention that raises levels of felt love over a longer period of time.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Oravecz et al., 2020).
Nearly 50 inches of snow fell in Buffalo, New York, three days in December 2022. Axios reported it was the longest blizzard on record. It was so bad cars were banned. Bitter cold across the US made conditions worse.
The temperature dropped 47 degrees in two hours on December 22, 2022, in Denver, Colorado and quickly settled in at minus one Fahrenheit. In Alabama they had a hard freeze warning on Christmas Eve. The Alabama Emergency Management Agency posted the following image.
The weatherperson here in Pennsylvania said the cold could kill you. He wasn’t joking. I cranked up the stove in my office (our family room before we added on) to fight the blizzard.
My snowblower and I did battle with the blizzard. I was glad I changed the oil in my jousting machine. The mundane means more in life-threating skirmishes. Even hot coffee tastes better.
An enemy gives meaning to life.
An enemy provides urgency.
When the temperature was cold enough to kill us, we got our wiggle on when we walked from the garage to the warmth of our entry room (over 120 feet). Snow is angry when it’s below zero Fahrenheit. Our snow was grumbling. You feel the urgency of life when you walk on angry snow.
Cold weather brings me to life. Warm temperatures put me to sleep.
Life is sleepwalking until you look an enemy in the eye.
Fighting for is better than fighting against. But in my case fighting against will have to do.
What enemy is bringing meaning, urgency, and vitality to your leadership?
What are you fighting against? Fighting for?
The 5 Powers of a Good Enemy – Red Sox Fans Hate the Yankees
*Image source of Franklin Street in Buffalo, NY: the Twitter page of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul
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Peter Drucker famously said, “Learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”
Nurturing a continuous learning culture is a prerequisite to an agile and flexible organization. It’s a culture where employees are continually striving to increase knowledge, competence, innovation, and performance. A stagnant learning culture, on the other hand, hinders an organization’s growth and development.
In this guide, we’ll tell you how to foster a culture of continuous learning and why it’s an initiative worth taking.
A continuous learning culture is where everyone in an organization collectively tries to increase their knowledge and integrate that knowledge to ensure better outcomes, such as superior performance, greater competency, and improved innovation.
Continuous learning culture takes many forms and an organization. Typically, employees should:
When you have lifelong learners on your team, you’ll find the whole company ahead of the curve. This is in sharp contrast to a complacent workforce where there’s little to no influx of new ideas and is a waste of company resources.
Learning culture directly correlates to your business’s success.
Case in point—Deloitte‘s Leading in Learning report found that continuous learning firms are 46% more likely to be first to market, experience 37% higher productivity, and are 92% more likely to innovate. This makes…
Episode 1969 Scott Adams: Nothing Happening In The News But That Will Not Stop Us From Sipping
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Power silences dissent. But uncontested decisions are weak. People nod when they disagree to put food on their table until organizational cupboards are bare. That’s what happened to Ford Motor Company a few years ago.
“The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.” Peter Drucker
The weak have power. The weak become like bawling toddlers in the candy aisle (after the person in charge says no). If they scream loud enough, they will get some sweets just to shut them up. In politics and business the weak disrupt.
Two years ago, the media was concerned the radical left would hogtie the President. More recently, brows are wrinkled over the radical right. Will the Speaker of the House be able to govern? The media lives for controversy. It isn’t concerned. If there isn’t a controversy one must be drummed up so we’ll tune in. Thank goodness for the disgruntled weak.
The power of the weak is their ability to mess up the agenda of the strong. They drag their feet until someone pays attention. If foot dragging doesn’t work, they scream. If screaming doesn’t work, they throw things. The strong will pay attention.
Power wants weakness to shut-up and eat broccoli. But the media wants the weak to speak up and I do too. Power makes people stupid.
Smart leaders invite dissent. They don’t silence it. They learn from it. It’s a mirage when people shut-up and do as they’re told. We are all stronger when the weak have a voice, even when they don’t get everything they want.
The 13 Principles of Disagreement
3 People to Throw Off the Team
How do leaders invite dissent without creating quagmire?
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LinkedIn is a fantastic medium for extending your reach, positioning yourself as a thought leader, and building your personal brand.
However, to get the most out of this platform this coming year, you need to understand the key pillars required to create a winning LinkedIn marketing strategy. And that’s what this article is all about– here are 5 actionable tips you can integrate into your 2023 LinkedIn marketing strategy to make it stronger and more effective.
Whether it’s a completely new post or something you’re repurposing from your website, original and fresh information is how to get an engaged audience that keeps coming back.
You want to avoid simply regurgitating links and info that’s posted outside of LinkedIn. For one, most social media platforms want to keep people on their sites. And second, it shows you’re a thought leader in your industry.
If you want to get a feel of how this works, take a look at your favorite brands and personalities on the site to see the type of content they post. Heck, you can even check out my page for examples.
LinkedIn gives you all the tools you need. There are a variety of content types you can post to the platform, including blog posts and articles, video content like live sessions and interviews, case studies, and more.
Part of my philosophy is humanizing your marketing so you can create authentic relationships that translate to success and growth. LinkedIn was originally conceived as the “social media for professionals,” and, sure, it still is. However, that doesn’t mean you should trap yourself in a box where your content comes off bland and boring.
For your marketing strategy to be effective, it needs a relatable approach so your audience can connect with your brand on a personal level. If you have a funny bone and some wit, show it off!
Of course, you want everything to align with your marketing messaging and your personal brand voice.
As mentioned above, LinkedIn gives you plenty of solutions so you can be creative and post content through various mediums– blogs, videos, etc.
But LinkedIn also provides you with the tools to see how that content performs through LinkedIn Analytics. It gives you invaluable data such as how much engagement a post gets, how different times affect the post’s performance, whether or not your content is getting leads, and more.
With this info, you can see how your marketing strategy is working and if it’s time to go full steam ahead or pivot and rethink your approach. And you should be constantly assessing the performance of your content and evolving your campaign so your…
