“The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.” - Tom Peters

With annual budgeting season upon us, many organizations are facing the age-old question of cutting or spending their way to prosperity. Many businesses talk about the importance of growth yet allocate much of their planning time toward cost control initiatives. Yet, the celebrated stories of success rarely involved a sustained history of austerity. Business consultant Scott Edinger sums it up well in a Forbes article, “I believe strongly that we should attack waste, and there is often plenty of fat to trim. Unfortunately, many executives are so laser-focused on cost-cutting that they lose sight of their real objective: actual growth, not just the bottom line.”

Treating your clients well by investing in new and better solutions and attracting, growing, and retaining the best talent in the market can’t be accomplished through spending cuts. It requires investment.

In The Excellence Dividend, Peters pleads for leaders to over-invest in people and facilities. “Cost cutting is a death spiral,” he writes. That said, successful companies remain profitable over time.

Twenty years ago my wife and I were about one month into our new jobs after a cross country move to Arizona. I had just turned twenty-five and was figuring out the pecking order in the highly competitive sales focused culture of my new company.

Our firm was the dominant insurance provider in Phoenix. We worked with most of the major sports teams and that came with a reciprocal understanding that my company would be an active supporter of the teams through advertising and purchasing suites.

On Friday morning, September 24, 1999, news came that our office head had suffered a mild heart attack. He was going to be okay, which we were all thankful to hear. Not long after I observed many of our senior people huddling and excitedly talking about “the trip.” I got up from my desk to see what was going on.

Life insurance is one of those necessary evils that many of us don’t like to think about. While you hope you never need it, the chances are at some point you will. Life insurance is a wonderful way to help protect your family’s financial future whether you have a spouse, kids, parents that depend on you for financial support, or just debt. Life insurance provides a tax-free benefit to fulfill your needs, and those of your family, should you pass away andcan help your family pay for, and pay off, expenses such as:

• Funeral cost
• Uncovered medical expenses
• Mortgage
• Loans and credit card debt
• College funding
• Retirement funding
• Ongoing living expenses for your dependents

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Morales Group, a nationally recognized, Indianapolis-based MBE staffing company. We hope you enjoy their wisdom and perspective.

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin

Learning is understood and widely accepted for those of us who have gone through primary and collegiate schooling. We were regularly surrounded by individuals who encouraged and supported our development. New ideas and change were expected of us; the sky was the limit!

But what about once we got into the workplace? For many, we settled into the day-to-day routine, taking care of business, unaware of the toll that our comfortable, monotonous, uninterrupted tasks seemed to be having on our personal and professional growth.

Do you hear regular employees saying “I don’t get how this project management tool works” or “I’m bad at giving presentations. Please let someone else do it.” If so, reevaluation of your team’s growth mindset might be in order.

Summer is coming to an end. For some, that means it’s time to prepare the summer house for winter, put items into storage, and say goodbye until next Spring. The checklist below will help you remember what you need to do to ensure that your home is safe and secure until next year.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Mike Paton, Visionary at EOS Worldwide, LLC. We hope you enjoy Paton’s wisdom and perspective.

My high school cross-country coach, Chuck Lucas, was a legend. He and his teams won more than twenty league championships, countless district titles and two state titles – my senior year and the year following. There were lots of reasons “Coach Luke” was effective, but one was remarkable. He saw things other coaches never saw.

Michigan and Illinois recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana. This patchwork of laws, coupled with federal law that still criminalizes marijuana, leaves many employers wondering what they can prohibit and test for in the workplace.

According to Tom Peters, lunch is sacred. As he sees it, throughout the year we have “225 golden-never-to-be-repeated opportunities” to meet new people, learn new things, and build and nurture relationships inside and outside our organizations.

Okay, I like lunch as much as the next person. I fill my shared lunch hours with friends and colleagues whenever I can. But I’ve never thought of it as sacred. What gives?

Prepared, Not Scared.

That is the theme for this year’s National Preparedness Month. Annually, FEMA and other government organizations dedicate the month of September to educating individuals, families, businesses, and communities on the importance of taking action to prepare for emergency situations.The weekly themes include:

• Week 1 (Sept 1-7) - Save Early for Disaster Costs
• Week 2 (Sept 8-14) - Make a Plan to Prepare for Disasters
• Week 3 (Sept 15-21) - Teach Youth to Prepare for Disasters
• Week 4 (Sept 22-30) - Get Involved in Your Community's Preparedness

Though we hope you’ll consider disaster preparedness an important aspect of your risk management strategy all year long, this is a great time to check on your planning – both personally and in your organization. We’ve gathered a collection of resources to help you develop, implement, and test your emergency plans.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Mark Weber, CEO of YMCA of Southwest Michigan and interim CEO of YMCA of Michiana. We hope you enjoy Mark’s wisdom and perspective.

To improve our communities and make them places where people are healthy, safe, and cared for, takes a lot of work. As a non-profit organization, we know we can’t do it alone. The ability to effectively partner with other individuals and organizations in our communities is essential to the building of healthy communities.