The primary desire of family business advisors, like myself, is to see family-owned businesses live on for many generations. But some family businesses are beyond saving and want to die peacefully. Those businesses need hospice. Hospice is a service and philosophy of care for terminally ill patients. Hospice has four primary goals: Relieve the pain...

Church announcements are symptomatic of a common business problem. Leaders intend to communicate useful information but fail to make it understandable to all of the audience. For example, this is the announcement made from the pulpit of my church yesterday: “If you are a first-time visitor, please tell us more about yourself by filling out...

President Dwight Eisenhower and President Abraham Lincoln share something unusual in common. Neither had the support of family or friends when they ran for president. No one in Lincoln’s family voted for him. And no one in Eisenhower’s home town of Denison, Texas voted for him. Though both lacked the moral support of family and...

Does your cost system need to be precise? Probably not. Does it need to be accurate. Yes! What’s the difference? The four pictures above begin to provide an answer. Accurate costs are random but near the target. For example, I have a refrigerator with a thermostat that keeps it a constant 38.0F. I test it with...

“My hiring process assumes that if you’re hired, you won’t be fired.” If you told that to everyone you interviewed for a job opening, what impact would it have on them? On you? Job seekers would know from the onset that your hiring process is going to be different. And you will be much more...

I met three family-owned businesses during my 2016 Summer vacation. I fear only one will survive.  Cook’s Mens Store has operated 51 years on the town square in Memphis, Missouri. But according to John Cook, the 83 year-old founder, 2016 may be its last. Why? Because wishes alone don’t work. John told me that he...

Just because you promise to do something does not mean you’re prepared to do it. Couples make a lot of promises. To love one another in sickness and in health. Whether richer, or poorer. When things are good, or when they’re worse. Most couples spend more time on planning the wedding ceremony than preparing themselves...

Budgets are boring. They’re easy to create. Simply take last year’s spending and multiply it by an inflation factor or an across-the-board budget cut percent. Voila, you’ve got a budget. Easy activities rarely determine an organization’s success. Creating a budget is relatively easy and not mission critical. Strategy is mission critical. Strategy determines success or...

“Put it in writing” is some of the simplest, wisest advice I’ve been given. Here are several examples: – Putting her end of life wishes in writing, made the difficult decisions at the end of my mother’s life much easier. – Putting in writing what I want my legacy to be resulted in the publishing...

We must ask Why? five times to get to the root cause of a problem. I was in the right place at the right time in 1985. I was the newly hired controller of a Motorola manufacturing plant. The company’s corporate leadership defined Six Sigma quality as our 5-year goal. To put that goal in...