28 February 2008 
Solutions to Management Problems — Seminar in Baltimore 26 March 2008
What Do Top-Performing Business Executives, Elite Military Leaders, and Effective Government Officials have in Common?
They work to manage outcomes – The best managers build support through personal persuasion.
The Solutions To Your Management Problems
seminar trains managers
how to apply this winning philosophy to their own leadership challenges
Are you running out of time…while your staff runs out of work? If your management skills need to be sharpened, you will not want to miss this class. Light refreshments.
Who: Managers who need to produce favorable outcomes or to influence results
What: An introduction to the Management Problems and Solutions seminar
When: Wednesday, March 26, 7 pm to 9 pm
Where: The Harbour League
Why: Improve managerial effectiveness
Cost: $25 donation
Make your check to the The Harbour League
Jack Yoest, President of Management Training of DC, is a former Armored Cavalry Officer in Combat Arms and is an Adjunct Professor of Management at the
He has managed software, health care and international human resource management companies.
Jack also served in Virginia Governor Gilmore’s administration as Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Resources where he acted as the Chief Technology Officer for the secretariat. He was responsible for the successful Year 2000 (Y2K) conversion for the 16,000-employee unit.
He was also a manager with a medical device start-up and helped move sales from zero to over $12 million, resulting in a buy-out by Johnson & Johnson. Jack has consulted in
Jack has been published by the Scripps-Howard News Service, National Review Online, Independent Women’s Forum and The Business Monthly. He is a free-lance columnist for the Business and Media Institute. He is commonly known as Your Business Blogger.
Questions? www.Yoest.com, Jack@Yoest.org, or call Jack at 202.215.2434 to save your spot.
Make your check to The Harbour League. Pay at the door. Or detach & mail to:
Management Training of DC, LLC
———————————————————————————————————————
Name:____________________________________
Organization:_______________________________
Position:___________________________________
Email address:______________________________
Phone #: _____________________
Donation: $25…..$50….. $100
Please make plans to join your friends for refreshments at The Harbour League for this skill-sharpening seminar on March 26th. Don’t miss this class. Space is limited. We look forward to seeing you there! Jack
Cross Post at Reasoned Audacity.
24 February 2008
What Is The Purpose of Business? Solutions for your Management Problems
Your Business Blogger presents a 90 second lesson on the purpose of business. Students: This is not a substitution for class attendance.
But it is always helpful to know what your professor thinks is important…
cross post at Reasoned Audacity.
Script 22 February 2008 What is the Purpose of Business?
Hi, I’m Jack Yoest, Your Business Blogger with Solutions for your Management Problems.
Peter Drucker tells us that the purpose of business is to create a customer and make a profit.
You know that the role of the manager is to Plan, Organize, Lead, Motivate and Control.
This is the manager’s job – to get things done through other people to accomplish the mission of the company.
But in all the job-doing, the manager must know what his business is in business for – someone has to buy what you’re selling – and you must make a buck.
If nobody buys what you have to peddle and you don’t make a profit, the IRS has a nifty word for this category:
It’s called – A Hobby.
A hobby is not the same as a non-profit corporation: A hobby like is a sole-proprietorship with lots of money, effort and hours invested, but no customers and no income.
(I’ve had a number of those “businesses.”)
Business meets needs – and is the organized effort – here’s where the manager comes in — the organized effort – to meet the goals of the company
It doesn’t matter if your business is manufacturing, service or marketing, remember your business must do two things:
Create a customer, make a profit.
I’m Jack Yoest Your Business Blogger
For more Management Help go to Yoest.com
YOEST.COM
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19 February 2008
Managers: Are You Controlling Events? Or Are Events Controlling You?
“Am I controlling events, or
Are events controlling me?”
This is the Transcript: Your Mission As A Leader, 26 March 2007
An Excerpt from the 2 day seminar Managing Management Time tm
Our Mission Statement for managers:
To control events.
In order to control events we got to be able to do a number of things simultaneously on the job
First, we’ve got to anticipate future events and their impact on our organization.
Now trying to anticipate the future in fraught with minefields
The future has three characteristics
1 It’s getting here on time — whether we’re ready for it or not
2 It’s going to get here sooner that we think
3 And is not going to be like we think it’s going to be
If you’re looking at your crystal ball and you’re trying to anticipate something like the future with those characteristics, even with a good battling average, it’s going to be pretty poor numbers wise, correct?
So we’ve got to be able do something else: We’ve got to have in ourselves arranged for the mental flexibility and organizational flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances in the present.
Because people strike out at that, what have we got to be able to do? We’ve got to learn from out own mistakes and the mistakes of others. Now in order to anticipate, adapt and learn we got to be able to do two things:
1 Make the necessary judgments, and
2 Exert the necessary influence.
When I say influence, what am I talking about?
Well it is the molecule of management.
When you see that molecule, you are going to see a nucleus. It says ‘You.’ When you see ‘You,’ that is you. This is not the group you. Not the Cross Functional Team you. Not the Bowling league you. Not the lovey dovey collective you. That is you, right now where you are seated, in the organization.
When I see that ‘you’ – I think of my self — I want you to think of yourselves.
Now, if you or I were on a desert island growing tomatoes and we had no boss we were accountable to no one; no peers we had to coordinate with and no staff we had to lead, we could do what we want, when we want, where we want, correct?
But the minute you and I are a nucleus in an organization, our time is not our own. Any one of those electrons can with an inconveniently timed memo or email phone or phone call – screw up our plan for a day, the week, the month, correct?
There is a formula that goes with this — Your Mission:
Competence plus Support equals Performance
If this were a vocational or technical seminar, the formula would be competence equals performance.
But the minute you get in a management or leadership position, your performance is the sum of two items: support and competence. Your personal competence and the organizational support you are getting.
If one of those two elements has to go to zero, not that I recommending this, but if one of those two items has to go to zero, either competence or support, which had best never go to zero?
Support.
You can be an idiot and still move to the right on the formula and get equal to get to performance. But if you are a Ph.D. and every one hates your guts then you are dead in the water. You won’t be contributing to anything.
Oncken’s first law:
What you know
Will not get off the ground
Without the active support
Of who you know
And to pull all this off we have to have discretionary time. To make the judgment we are paid to make and directing the influence we are paid to exert.
What are the enemies of discretionary time?
What can chew up our time on the job before we even think about managing that time?
Well, if I get micro-managed by my boss – that’ll chew up my time.
If my internal peers on whom I dependent for support wrap me up in red tape, queuing, and politics,
That can chew up my time.
If my staff is upwardly delegating tasks that they should be handling – Is that going to chew up my time?
And if all that’s happening, what about the external peers on that chart – the customers – Are they going to be ambushing me with customer complaints? Are government agencies going to be investigating me and I didn’t see it coming. You Bet.
And then life is not worth living.
So what is my first priority?
Ahead of any other priorities seen on the chart – it is to maximize discretionary time. And how do I do that?
By getting control of the relationships on that molecule – because of the positions they hold – rob me of that time.
Thank for listening to this except of Managing Management Time – I look forward to hearing your comments, and look forward to presenting the rest of this leadership philosophy to your organization, the seminar, Managing Management Time.
Until then, periodically ask your self,
“Am I controlling events, or
Are events controlling me?”
2 February 2008
Your Business Blogger in Business & Media: Stock Market Gains
Your Business Blogger was recently published in the Business and Media Institute.
CNN Warns of a Recession, Ignores Stock Market Gains
‘Your $$$$$’ ignored guest to promote a downbeat view of the economy.
By Jack Yoest
Business & Media Institute
9/18/2007 11:46:27 AM
CNN‘s “Your Money” takes a gloomy view of the economy even when its own guests say otherwise. Rather than listen to an economist, the hosts decided they knew better.
”People [are] whispering about the risk of a recession,” explained host Christine Romans on the September 15, 2007 show. She claimed “The stock market still hasn’t found its footing.” Not a well-researched comment, considering this is a financial program.
The Dow has gone up from 7,500 in 2003 to 13,403 and has climbed almost 1,000 points or 7.5 percent just in 2007. Employment has dropped to a low 4.6 percent, and the economy has been growing at an average of 2.7 percent per year with almost six years of uninterrupted growth.
| None of which was mentioned by Romans. To make her case for catastrophe, Romans invited guest John Rutledge, chairman of Rutledge Capital. Rutledge, said Romans, “Is going to tell us how scared we should be …” |
Except that Rutledge didn’t appear frightened at all. Just the opposite: “It doesn’t make sense to go around screaming like Pee Wee Herman,” he said.
Romans was not screaming, but she did not react to Rutledge’s optimism.
“It’s a pretty good world out there,” said Rutledge. “[The] world economy this year is growing more than 5 percent … It’s [grown] more than 4 percent the last 6 years.” No response from the CNN host.
Rutledge was bullish on the world economy and nearly shouted, “Highest growth in the history of the world!” There was still no reaction from Romans or co-host Ali Velshi.
While CNN reported on “recession,” the word was not mentioned in a September 7, 2007 conference call run by Edward P. Lazear, Ph.D., chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Lazear discussed the “good path” of the economy and he briefly mentioned some field research in gathering input from industry.
Unlike reports on CNN, many industry leaders are not focused on recession, he said.
“Their problem,” said Lazear from the data, is “attracting and keeping talent.” Companies have no problems “selling stuff,” said the chairman.
And much of the stuff being sold is for the off-shore market.
“The rest of the world [is important],” Rutledge said to Romans, “because one-half of the profits of the S&P 500 come from outside the U.S.” A healthy world economy is good because “exports are the fastest growing part of the U.S. economy.” A strong world economy minimizes the probability of any local recession.
That didn’t stop Velshi: “A UCLA forecast says the U.S. economy will be so sluggish in 2008 that a single piece of bad news could tip it into a recession …”
Click on Christine Romans image for video clip.
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Velshi and Romans didn’t engage Rutledge and ignored him as he said, “The chances of a recession are pretty slim next year.”
All the “whispering” of recession predictions is a pattern of reporting from media outlets. Recession has been predicted for four years, but hasn’t occurred as BMI noted in “Media Coverage Rated ‘R’ for ‘Recession.’” |
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Jack Yoest, a freelancer for the Business & Media Institute, is president of Management Training of DC, LLC and teaches business at the Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia.
1 February 2008
Your Business Blogger in Business & Media: Gas Price Prediction
Your Business Blogger had a recent article published by the Business and Media Institute,
CNN’s ‘Your $$$$$’ Gets Gas Price Prediction Wrong
Though predicted price spike didn’t happen, show still talks down about the future.
By Jack Yoest
Business & Media Institute
10/29/2007 11:54:06 AM
CNN’s “Your $$$$$” is ready for a spike in gas prices. It just hasn’t happened despite predictions.
On October 20, the show’s guest Peter Beutel, president of energy risk management firm Cameron Hanover, predicted a 20-cent increase in the price of a gallon a gas. How soon? In the next week.
It didn’t happen.
In a segment entitled “Addicted to Oil,” co-host Ali Velshi reported that rising crude oil prices could be trouble for the economy. “Oil topping $90 per barrel,” which, Velshi helpfully added, “is 10 bucks from a hundred.” He implied the possibility of breaking the Benjamin-barrier was upon us.
[Ali Velshi and Christine Romans are the long-time hosts at CNN's Your $$$$$ (or money -- clever)]
Velshi then asked Beutel, “Are we going that way?”
Beutel replied, “Yes, it is possible.”
Velshi’s co-host Christine Romans mentioned the relationship between rising crude oil prices and the cost of gasoline.
“Are we going to see this at the pump in the near future?” she asked.
Beutel confidently predicted gas price increases: “Yes, we are going to see it next week …you will see 20 cents coming next week.”
The national average for regular gas around the time of Beutel’s October 20 forecast was $2.82, according to the government report at the Energy Information Administration.
One week later, the AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report dated October 27 reported the average price of gas remained steady the week following at $2.837 for a gallon of regular. By October 29, it had reached $2.856 – an increase of about 3.5 cents since the 20-cent prediction.
[Visit the Fuel Gauge Report for gas prices across the country.]
But on the October 20 show, the CNN guest expected gas prices to top $3, pushing the gloomy predictions of an economic downturn caused by higher crude oil prices.
Velshi continued to lead on the dangers of oil price increases, asking, “Can this cause a recession?”
Beutel replied, “I think it is [a danger].” But Beutel reminded us of his track record of past predictions: “A lot of people tell me I’m wrong [about a recession] and so far I’ve got to admit I’ve been premature.”
What some might have called a “wrong prediction” CNN’s guest called “premature,” implying that a recession is still ahead. Beutel said, “We have not seen [a recession] and I thought we would.”
Beutel got it wrong. Unfortunately, he was not on the October 27 program to explain his error or the welcome news of stable gas prices.
But CNN was not about to give up talking down the economy. Instead of Beutel, CNN’s Jennifer Westhoven stepped in and made some more predictions on the October 27 edition of “Your $$$$$.” On the segment, “Crude Awakening,” she rhetorically asked at “what point are we going to have these higher [crude oil] prices tip the economy into, potentially, recession?”
She reported that the current gas price was $2.82, the same as one week earlier. “But there are plenty of analysts who say that we can probably expect to see a jump of 10 to 15 cents in the coming weeks.”
She didn’t say if one of the analysts was Beutel.
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Please comment and let me know what you think.
Jack Yoest, a freelancer for the Business & Media Institute, is president of Management Training of DC, LLC and teaches business at the Northern Virginia Community College.