PSMJ Article: Making Annual Reviews A Positive Process
Making Annual Reviews A Positive Process Download
the boss blog
Articles and thinkpieces from Stu on company culture, leadership, strategy, and more.
Competing With Big Firms and Private Equity: The Gap Small Businesses Must Close
As a small business consultant, I start most engagements with a simple assessment: 20 questions covering the fundamentals of how a business actually runs. Strategy, accountability, metrics, cadence, decision-making—nothing exotic. Just the basics. Here’s the hard truth: most small businesses score pretty low on that first pass. That usually changes
Why Regular Reviews Matter—Even When You’re “Too Busy”
A surprising number of firms still don’t run any kind of structured employee review process—not annually, not quarterly, not ever. And when you dig into why, the answer is usually some version of this: “Our technical leads are slammed. They don’t have time to review their people.” Fair point. In
Why Small Business Owners Stay Frustrated (And How to Break the Cycle)
I had coffee with a fellow consultant today, and our conversation drifted into familiar territory—small business frustration. At one point she joked, “Aren’t all small business owners frustrated?” It was tongue-in-cheek, but let’s be honest: it wasn’t far from reality. You’d be hard-pressed to find a small business owner who
Death by Meeting
Every leader knows what a bad meeting feels like. The energy drops. People disengage. The conversation wanders. And by the end, nothing is decided, everyone is more confused than when they started, and the only clear outcome is the collective wish that the meeting had been cancelled. This is what
The Pace of Learning
There’s no question that specialization can drive efficiency and quality for design professionals. The deeper you go in one area, the more proficient and accurate you become. But too much specialization can come at a cost—limited flexibility and fewer opportunities for the broader learning that comes from diverse experiences. So,