Ohio’s Year End Surplus

August 14, 2014 by

business (3)With a surplus of $475 million the Ohio government is finishing the year better than expected.  And although the recommendation is to be cautious with this surplus, lawmakers are still unsure what they will do with it. It could mean tax cuts or debt payments for the state of Ohio or they can tap into the funds for additional spending for the next years.

To read more about this and other topics follow the links below.

Main Street Ohio Retailer Needs Congress to Pass E-Fairness Legislation

For nearly 40 years, I’ve held the reins at Baker and Baker Jewelers in downtown Marietta, Ohio. Spanning nearly a century, Baker and Baker has grown and evolved along with our community. Over the years, I’ve had to contend with a lot, but the current disparity between how our nation’s tax laws treat brick-and-mortar businesses like mine compared with our online competitors is perhaps one of the most insurmountable obstacles we’ve ever had to face. For the sake of Main Street businesses and communities nationwide, it’s time for Congress to do something to fix this problem once and for all.

Currently, most if not all of my online competitors are exempt from collecting and remitting state sales taxes. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar businesses like mine must collect and remit these taxes every day on every purchase, putting me at an immediate 7.25 percent disadvantage here in Marietta. As any small-business owner will tell you, this is enough to make or break a business. I can generally match or beat a price — I have no issue competing against a nearby retailer or an online competitor — but I can’t tell a customer that I won’t bother charging them sales tax. The government would probably throw me in jail if I did that, yet my online competitors are invited to do that every day.  How is this a free market?

Ohio’s projected year-end surplus grows despite tax cuts 

Even as projected revenue is reduced because of new income-tax cuts, the state budget office now estimates the state will finish the fiscal year with nearly $632 million more than it will spend.

Once the mandatory carry-over is subtracted, the early estimate is the state will end June 2015 with a surplus of about $475 million. That’s money lawmakers could seek to tap into via tax cuts, debt payments or additional spending when they return in November, or next year.

The estimated surplus is unusually high — 2.1 percent of the general revenue fund compared with the 0.5 percent that budget officials often target. Tim Keen, the state budget director, said continued Medicaid underspending — there are roughly 200,000 fewer Ohioans on Medicaid than anticipated — is driving the surplus higher.

Ohio’s rainy-day fund is at its legal capacity — around $1.5 billion — so the question is what Gov. John Kasich and lawmakers will choose to do with the surplus money, should it actually materialize. Keen, as he often does, is urging caution.

“We’ve worked very hard to regain the fiscal stability of the state, and we ought to be very conservative and cautious with what commitments we make, particularly because much of this is from underspending,” he said.

Dayton given an ‘A’ from small businesses

The city of Dayton is rated the top business friendly metro city in Ohio, according to a survey of small business owners.

Small business owners gave Dayton an A- for its overall friendliness and tax code, according to the survey of 12,000 U.S. small businesses done by Thumbtack.com in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

“It’s a good environment for our firm, and we’ve had a lot of support from the community through the years,” Tom Thickel, president of architecture firm Levin Partners Associates, said about Dayton.

Nearly 80 percent of businesses in Dayton are considered small businesses, meaning they have fewer than 50 employees, according to Dayton Chamber of Commerce vice president Chris Kershner.

Downtown Dayton Partnership president Sandy Gudorf said small businesses help add to the job creation needed in Dayton.

“We’ve seen significant activity in small business growth in downtown. This is a great community for a small business,” Gudorf said.

Gina Jones, owner of Green Baby, an organic baby specialty store, said Dayton has opportunities she wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Filed Under: Ohio Business News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The BWC Settlement Agreement

August 4, 2014 by

business (8)After a long battle and many years of unfair rates to small business owners, the BWC has to pay $420 million to small businesses all across Ohio.  The ruling came last Thursday and agreed with a ruling from 2013 that states that the BWC must refund millions of dollars to small businesses owners. Now that settlement has been reached many small businesses should be getting refunds ranging from a few pennies to millions of dollars according to some reports.

To read more follow the links below.

Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation reaches $420M settlement agreement over rigged premiums

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has reached an agreement to pay $420 million to settle a years-long legal battle over allegations it overcharged business owners for workers’ compensation premiums.

The agency would create a fund to repay the more than 250,000 businesses that were overcharged between 2001 and 2008, according to the settlement disclosed Wednesday.

In a class-action lawsuit filed in 2007, thousands of mostly small-business owners accused the bureau of rigging the system to benefit participants of a special group-rating plan. They asked for $1.3 billion in damages then.

The Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals in a scathing decision in May called the system “a cabal of Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation bureaucrats and lobbyists for group sponsors who rigged workers’ compensation insurance premium rates so that for employers who participated in the BWC’s group rating plan … it was ‘heads you win,’ and for employers who did not participate in the group rating plan … it was ‘tails you lose.’ ”

Columbus Small Businesses Endorse Same Sex Marriage

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Over 250 small businesses in Columbus endorsed same sex marriage on Monday, many saying it would boost business.

“When legislators talk about jobs, jobs, jobs they need to think about this,” said Mark Dempsey, owner of Dempsey’s restaurant.  “When you go to get married there’s a celebration involved. There’s the wedding reception, the wedding itself, there’s flowers, there’s cakes, there’s wedding rings.”

Dempsey’s downtown restaurant is no stranger to politics.  On the walls you can find pictures of everyone from Warren G Harding… to Tip O’Neill and the Gipper… to honest Abe.

Dempsey was joined by other Columbus small business owners today to endorse marriage equality in Ohio.

Kasich approved increase in Ohio’s small business income deduction

Ohio Governor John Kasich recently signed a bill that, among other things, increases the small business income deduction from 50% to 75% of the first $250,000 in net business income.

In an effort to grow Ohio’s economy, last year the Ohio budget bill included significant tax law changes to deliver a $2.7 billion tax cut to individuals and businesses, over the course of three years. The changes included:

• A small business tax cut that enables owners/investors to deduct from taxable income 50% of the first $250,000 in net business income.

• A 10% personal income tax cut to be phased in over three years. In 2013, Ohio tax rates were reduced by 8.5%.

• New assistance for lower-income Ohioans in the form of an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) equal to 5% of the amount claimed for the federal EITC.

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It Doesn’t Stop at Adolescence – Negative Peer Pressure in the Workplace

August 4, 2014 by

business (1)Peer pressure.  Everyone knows what peer pressure is, they’ve seen the afterschool specials, heard the lectures in 9th grade health class and had multiple adults in their life say, “If _____ jumped off a cliff would you do it too?”  When people talk about it they’re often talking about it in terms of children and teens. But, peer pressure is an issue which never goes away.  This is especially true in the workplace.

Millions of people have been known to say, “This job is just like being in high school again”.  Peer pressure is one of the reasons they say this, yet it’s not addressed with adults in the workplace nearly as well as it is with children and teens in school.  There’s an erroneous assumption that people grow out of their susceptibility to it as they age or mature.

Unfortunately, many people struggle with it throughout their lives, particularly in their employment.  Countless have identified it as their reason for quitting or getting fired from a job.  Almost 80% of people report having been negatively influenced by – or doing the influencing themselves – their co-workers into doing something they didn’t want to do.

There are 2 main categories which employees identify as having been negatively affected by peer pressure.  First, is drinking on the job and/or drinking too much at a company function, which resulted in personal and professional consequences.  The second category is being influenced to steal company resources: time, money, property or services.

Peer pressure, both negative and positive, is important for a company to be aware of and address.  It’s the way corporate culture is formed and maintained.  Employees develop shared ideas, assumptions and ways of behaving, which determine how they perceive and perform their jobs.  It’s how people think and act on a daily basis that most affects the bottom line.   As Nathaniel Banks said, “We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies.”

 

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Marketing Tips and Tools you Must Know About

July 21, 2014 by

business (4)The Ohio Small Business Development Center offers great advice and solutions for those entrepreneurs wanting to start a business in the state of Ohio.  From the planning stage to filing legal forms and permits the center offer steps, forms, phone numbers and links to the web sites you may need to begin your journey.  For the marketing and other tools you may need to compete with the big guys, here we offer you articles that can offer you solutions to some of your business decisions for now and in the future.

6 Marketing Ideas Small Businesses Can Learn From Big Brands

Marketing veteran Rob Schuham spends a lot of time encouraging big brands to act like small companies. Be nimble, he advises, be creative, be agile. Take a risk, he tells them, and act like a startup.

And when major clients on his roster at Denver-based Match Action Marketing have listened to his counsel, they’ve backed some groundbreaking campaigns that are instructive not only for their Fortune 100 brethren, but to the little guys, as well.

“If you get a marketing program right, you can set a category on its head,” said Schuham, CEO of Match Action. “The big guys have scale, so they can be kind of a beta test for innovative marketing. Small companies can find useful data points and adapt some of those tactics for their own purposes.”

Three tools every small business can’t do without

Technology can make or break a small business, both at launch and when success has it scaling up. Here are three-must haves to ensure professionalism, maximize productivity, build market share and save money for businesses with 1-10 employees.

Telephony

The phone is still the most common way that your customers, partners and suppliers will communicate with you, so don’t cut corners. But don’t spend more than you have to, either.

For starters, get a dedicated business number. There are services that offer a free basic phone number, or, based on your business needs, you can get a low-cost monthly subscription virtual PBX service, like Cloud Phone, that allows you to get a toll-free or local number with more advanced business features, such as ability to add employee extensions.

Next, decide whether your employees really need deskphones or whether tablets and smartphones are a better fit for their work styles. If it’s the latter, eliminating deskphones can easily save a couple hundred bucks up front in hardware, plus $30 or more per month per employee in service fees. Those savings are a major reason why so many businesses are ditching deskphones in favor of VoIP softphones on tablets, smartphones and laptops.

Why Your Content Isn’t Going Viral (Infographic)

You wrote a kick-butt blog post.

You worked for days on that video.

You stretched all of your graphic design muscles to make an infographic.

And no one shared any of it.

Ouch. You have good content, but it just can’t seem to get any shares.

It doesn’t have to be that way anymore. Who Is Hosting This has  an infographic that explains why your content won’t go viral, and how you can make it do so next time. Here are a couple of the infographic’s tips:

1. Appeal to emotions.

Filed Under: Ohio Business News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Social Intelligence – A Leadership Imperative

July 15, 2014 by

business (7) We all know someone who’s smart, whose intelligence is unquestionable.  Yet, he or she is socially awkward, has few friends and struggles being successful personally and professionally. They often say the wrong thing at the wrong time in social situations because they’re unable to read the crowd.  They usually aren’t achieving what they or others believe is their full potential.

In the past it was thought that a person’s professional and personal potential could be measured and predicted by their Intelligence Quotient (IQ).  But, this theory is limiting and doesn’t adequately identify the diverse human behaviors needed to achieve success.  Intelligence is multidimensional and comprised of different, overlapping and equally important subsets.

Social Intelligence (SI) is one of the subsets and is often referred to as “people skills”.  It used to be believed that people either had them or they didn’t.  Fortunately, while some of the “skills” are innate, SI can be studied, practiced and learned, which is positive news for anyone wanting to be an effective leader.

A successful leader must be able to connect with people, then effectively influence and motivate them to collaborate.  This is accomplished through understanding social and group situations and the dynamics which govern them.  SI is the ability to observe people’s interactive styles and use the knowledge to develop effective strategies, which help a leader achieve his or her objectives though others.

However, SI is not limited to reading other people well.  An influential leader has awareness of and insight into their own perceptions and reaction patterns. Through experience and on-going education they learn to accurately assess the impact of their behavior on others, using this knowledge to lead and inspire.

It’s assumed that people automatically learn to get along with others as they mature and gain experience.  Unfortunately, a quick look around the typical workplace shows this is not the case.  Most people don’t continue to learn and grow as they age – they never acquire the awareness and skills needed to succeed in professional or personal social situations.

Nevertheless, people who lack insight and competence, when interacting with others, can make significant improvements in their SI abilities at any time regardless of their age or circumstances.  And once the basic skills and knowledge are learned they’ll be able to experiment with additional behaviors and new interaction strategies.  Social Intelligence can increase throughout one’s life giving anyone an improved chance of reaching their full potential.

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BWC and Other News

July 8, 2014 by

business (1)News about Ohio and what is happening in the state are important to all of us.  News about the Ohio Bureau of Workers compensation refusal to pay small business across Ohio what it owes them is not only negligent but devastating to the morale of Ohio Businesses and the local economies.  Small business owners deal with a myriad of issues in a daily basis, making government issues not only hard for them to do but impossible to fulfill is an obstacle and encumbrance to the well being of our economy.

Pressure Mounts On Gov. Kasich To Force BWC To Pay Back Small Businesses

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pressure on Gov. John Kasich to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 250,000 small businesses is mounting.
An NBC4 investigation into overcharges that sunk thousands of small business across Ohio is now going statewide.

An advertising campaign based on the NBC4 investigation is set to air on TV Friday, asking Kasich to get involved in the payback.

Ron Foreman is front and center in an ad campaign aimed directly at Kasich.

“I gathered my family together and told them, ‘Things are going to have to change because Daddy is going to have to file bankruptcy,'” Foreman said in the commercial.

Kasich plans small-business swing to 3 Ohio cities 

HAMILTON, OHIO: Ohio’s governor will focus on small businesses in a swing through three western Ohio cities.

Gov. John Kasich has Tuesday stops in Hamilton, the Dayton area and Tipp City. The Republican is seeking re-election this November. He will begin the day at Hamilton Caster, a business that makes casters, industrial wheels and other products and dates back more than a century in the Butler County seat.

A campaign announcement with the National Federation of Independent Business/Ohio is planned there. The small business association recently announced its endorsement of Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine’s re-election.

Ohio entrepreneurs should learn about new health coverage options: Grant Lahmann

Pundits and politicians from Ohio to Oregon have spent years bemoaning the new health care law and its impact on the economy, and on small businesses, in particular. But the law has been in full effect for six months now, and the real-life implications of it are anything but dismal.

A recent report shows the Affordable Care Act actually increased the gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2014, and here in the Buckeye State, almost 155,000 individuals, self-employed and small business owners and their workers have already found affordable insurance through the new insurance marketplace created by the health care law.

In case you’re not already familiar with it, Ohio’s marketplace has two branches — one for individuals, the other for small businesses. The individual marketplace is available to any self-employed individual or small business employee whose employer doesn’t offer insurance. Open-enrollment for the individual marketplace is closed, but enrollment for 2015 begins on November 15 this year.

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Small Business Hiring And Other News

July 3, 2014 by

business (1)It is always good for the small business owner’s morale knowing hiring is up and the economy is recovering.  According to recent numbers, hiring in June has been the strongest since two years ago, and that can only be good for the US economy and the small firms across the United States.  For more info about this and other stories follow the links below.

Small business hiring surges to fastest pace since early 2012

Now that’s more like it.

Small businesses nationally added 117,000 jobs in June, a 60 percent increase over their average for the first five months of the year and the fastest pace of hiring since early 2012, according to the latest numbers published Thursday by payroll processing firm ADP.

More than the companies in any other size category, those small firms pushed the overall job numbers last month to 281,000, the highest mark since fall 2012. Construction, transportation and professional services sectors posted the steepest gains.

“The job market is steadily improving,” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said in the report, noting that the gains were “broad based across all industries and company sizes.”

Still, it’s a particularly important rebound for the county’s smallest employers, who are often lauded as the most steady job creators but hadn’t cracked six-digits in monthly job gains since November. In addition, June was the second straight month that small companies have contributed more than 40 percent of all jobs created — a mark they fell shy of during the first four months of the year.

The Not-So-Small Business Administration

Last month the Small Business Administration updated the criteria it uses to determine what qualifies as a “small business” for the first time since 2008. The formula varies by industry, sometimes calculated by number of employees, other times by annual revenues or total assets. Thanks to the change, approximately 8,500 more companies (some with more than 1,000 employees) will now be eligible for the designation—and the federal assistance that goes with it.

Modern Tools for Mom-and-Pops

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. — Operators at KES Dispatch keep track of the company’s taxis on a yellow legal pad. They communicate with cars using a two-way radio. Drivers navigate their journeys largely by memory.

In the age of Uber and Lyft, the company is desperate to modernize.

“I gotta change something,” said Miguel Duarte, who has run his Mount Kisco, N.Y., company for 13 years. “I gotta stay ahead of the competition.”

Help is on the way. Dashride, a new start-up, wants to give KES Dispatch a fighting chance. It is helping Mr. Duarte modernize his company’s clunky dispatch system, starting with a mobile app that will soon let customers book, track, pay for and rate rides.

Dashride is just one of several web-based start-ups with a mission of empowering small, local businesses — often in struggling, traditional industries — by equipping them with tools and strategies that could help them keep up with changing times.

For example, Cups, a coffee subscription app that came to New York in April, helps independent coffee shops compete with giant chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. It is working with 50 small shops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. ShopKeep, a New York company, helps small businesses ring up sales, accept credit cards, email receipts or print remotely with an iPad-based checkout system.

Filed Under: Ohio Business News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Vacations Are Important For Your Bottom Line

July 1, 2014 by

business (2)Job related stress is universal.  Almost everyone has had job stress negatively affect them personally and professionally, sometimes on a daily basis.  Even people who thrive on it will admit there are times when it’s too much for them.  One of the greatest relievers of work stress is taking time off, whether it’s 1 day or 2 weeks.

And yet there were 429 million unused vacation days in the U.S. last year.  Many Americans don’t take enough time off – to their own and their company’s detriment.  Fore-going time off isn’t healthy, profitable or productive for people, companies or the economy.  It’s estimated those 429 days would have generated $160 billion and created 1.2 million jobs (mental_floss, July 2014).

It’s well documented that chronic stress takes its toll on the body: it decreases the ability to resist infection and maintain vital functions, increases accidents and injuries, creates sleep disturbances and can even negatively alter genetic material at the cellular level.  It’s equally well researched that chronic stress creates mental health issues: irritability, depression, anxiety, memory difficulties, poor decision making, social isolation, poor impulse control and loneliness.

Vacations help break the stress cycle by getting people out of their usual work schedules and habits.  Time away can be a 3 day weekend staycation or 2 weeks in Finland for the Air Guitar World Championships.  The essential part is to do something that’s a healthy break from the stress and routines of work.

A healthy break means different things to different people.  It can be: restful and recuperative, challenging and exciting, a religious pilgrimage, a decadent spa visit, seeing new cultures, or spending time with family and old friends.  It’s important to identify the desired benefits and how to achieve them before the vacation is taken, to be pro-active.

Unfortunately, vacations are often poorly planned and executed, too expensive and as stressful as the job people are taking a break from.  They don’t take time to think about what would be beneficial and what they actually need.  A little self awareness and planning can keep them from making the common mistake of needing a vacation from the stress of their vacation.

Every workplace has some form of stress, therefore, employers and employees alike can greatly benefit from time off.  Some companies have recognized this fact and made it mandatory for everyone to take all of their vacation time.   A mentally and physically healthy work force, capable of coping with workplace stress, goes a long way towards efficient productivity and successful profitability.

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Small Business News you Cannot Afford to Miss

June 25, 2014 by

business (10)The Small Business Administration office of Advocacy defines a small business as an independent business that has fewer than 500 employees.  This comprises 99.7% of all U.S employer companies and provides almost 50% of the private sector employment in the U.S.  In 2010 there were 27.9 million small businesses, and government agencies and officials realize the importance of this sector for the U. S. economy when dealing with policies and tax breaks.

Read more about this topic by following the links below.

Why Congress can’t afford to ignore small businesses this fall (5 reasons)

Right up there with cheesy slogans and attack ads, praise for small businesses has become a staple of campaign season in Washington.

It’s likely to be the same again this fall, and with good reason. Congressional hopefuls, both incumbents and their challengers, can’t afford to overlook the nation’s smallest employers, not just because the rest of the country has a soft spot for them, and not just because it makes for sound economic policy.

Rather, small business owners themselves represent a key voting bloc — individually not with quite the sway of large corporations, of course, but influential just the same. Here’s why.

1. They vote

Only about three in four eligible Americans are registered to vote, according to most estimates, and barely more than half cast a ballot during the 2012 elections, according to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

DCA Commisioner Menin Promises ‘Big Announcements’ on Small Business Fines

City Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin promised a group of small business owners a series of “big announcements” in the coming weeks around the agency’s inspection and fines process.

Speaking this morning at the annual meeting of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, Ms. Menin pledged to follow through on Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s campaign declaration that he would lessen burdensome regulations on small business owners.

“As a former small business owner, and one who dealt a lot with the DCA, I really know what it’s like to have a DCA inspector come and not know what they’re looking for,” Ms. Menin told the audience of around 50 business owners from the Upper West Side area in the breakfast meeting at Isabella’s restaurant. “We’re already starting to make changes at DCA.”

Even Small Business Owners Can Use These Tax Breaks

Two recent news clips caught my attention. One involved a company trying to avoid the IRS. The other involved the IRS trying to avoid trouble. Taken together, I can see how a small business owner might cynically ask if a small business has a fighting chance as far as taxes.

The first news item was about the latest rage in large company tax planning: “tax inversions.” U.S. companies seek to sidestep U.S. corporate taxes by relocating offshore through foreign mergers. The most recent example is the proposed Medtronic/Covidien merger. Even though Covidien has headquarters in the U.S., officially it is located in Ireland where the top marginal tax bracket is 10% lower than in the U.S. Apparently Medtronic hopes to save taxes by merging with an Ireland-based company.

The second news item relates to an ongoing scandal where the IRS is accused of targeting certain not-for-profit organizations because of their political leanings. The IRS announced this month that it can’t find two years of emails from Lois Lerner (the former head of the troubled not-for-profit tax division) to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash.

Filed Under: Ohio Business News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Complacency is Not a Successful Management Style

June 23, 2014 by

business (10)“I don’t want to rock the boat”  “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” “This is the way we have always done it.”  “It’s not that bad, let’s just wait and see.”  In today’s tentative business climate who hasn’t heard these statements from their managers.  You’ve probably said some of them yourself.

Over the last several years the workplace has been in transition, managers have hunkered down to wait it out or for it to blow over.  Unfortunately, while waiting, many managers have turned reasonable caution into unproductive complacency.  They’ve become complacent about their current jobs and future careers, no longer innovating for their company or themselves.

Complacency is defined (Merriam-Webster) as: 1. self-satisfaction, especially with one’s merits, advantages, or situation, often without awareness of potential or actual dangers or deficiencies 2. A feeling of unaware or uninformed satisfaction with how things are and not wanting to try to make them better.  It’s an unsatisfying, self-sabotaging, unproductive and potentially destructive way to think and behave.  Here are 6 ways to tell if you’ve become complacent.

You’ve lost your excitement – Have you begun to lose passion for your work?  Or have you already lost it and are no longer excited about your job or career?  Your passion may have disappeared or just gone astray, but either way it’s important to find it again.  Passion fuels excellence, gives you something to strive toward and helps sustain high performance, which makes it worth getting up in morning.

You look for shortcuts – Are you as thorough or detailed as you once were?  Many complacent mangers count on their past successes and good reputations to cover for their current laziness.  They become a liability to themselves and the company.

You no longer invest in yourself – Are you focused on success in your current job and long term career?  Complacent people stop investing time, money and energy to meet their goals and objectives; they no longer strive to improve.  They don’t maintain relationships with in-house and outside colleagues, network or attend trainings.

You’ve stopped learning – Do you think you’ve learned everything you need to know?  Managers who are “know it alls” are particularly dangerous to an organization.  They’re disruptive, negative, poor team players and routinely disliked by their co-workers.

You’ve stopped thinking and disengaged – Have you stopped asking questions and challenging yourself or others?  Complacent supervisors go along to get along.  They specialize in doing only what they’re told to do and bring little value to the company or to their careers. They’re seldom collaborative and do little to move company objectives forward.

You don’t take risks – Are you looking for the next calculated risk that will move you and your company forward?  Risk is healthy and essential in work and in life.  Complacency makes people poor judges of constructive risk vs. destructive risk.

We all have supervised, worked with or for people who are complacent mangers and have been frustrated by this management style.  It’s unsuccessful at its best and destructive at its worst.  It’s highly probably that George Patton was talking about just such a person when he said, “We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people.  Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”

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