It’s not that hard. Was talking with a client about yesterday’s rebooted resolutions. The very first one is:

I will ask every employee for one suggestion on how we can make it easier for our customers and prospects to do business with us. I will reward those employees whose suggestions we use.

You want to really accelerate your internal and external growth this year?

Constantly encourage your employees to go through their days thinking of ways for you to make it easier for customers to give you money.

Easier – that word’s important for the purposes of this discussion. Maybe it involves the use of new media. Maybe it involves some capital investment.

Heck, maybe you can’t implement every suggestion this year.

Measure and reward all serious suggestions – no matter how crazy. Make it your company’s internal mission to come up with as many suggestions as possible. Evaluate them. Measure their impact on the company.

Then (and why is it so many companies – including one I used to work for – want to avoid this last part) offer crazy rewards for their success. Offer crazy rewards for efforting to increase the numbers of ideas. Make the ideas available for everyone to see. Crazy ideas often lead to other crazy ideas. Keep reinforcing this throughout the year.

Roy Williams taught me long ago: “You cannot increase what you do not measure and reward.”

Encourage. Measure. Reward. Reinforce. Increase.

There – I just made it easy for you.

Related posts:

1. Small Business New Year's Resolution Reboot
2. Small Business Social Media Pt. 2: "Mission. Not Measurement Alone."
3. On the Road: Thinking Strategically

Yesterday, the boy and I dug deep into the world of science with help from a bunch of experiment videos from PBS.

Today, the mad scientist continued to advance his field with ‘will it sink or float, daddy?’

Next stop, Stockholm.

Related posts:

1. Snow Day Play
2. One Step Forward …
3. Stories From Home.

No school today. Snow day. There is some rejoicing. The boy actually likes going to school.

Our son’s gotten into science and cause/effect in a big way thanks to a free online video series over at PBS Kids’ Curious George pages.

The videos are each only a few minutes and present subjects like making music, how to organize stuff, planets and orbits, and making paper mache. They demonstrate experiments throughout.

Last night he and I tackled paper mache. This morning, our project didn’t work out the way we had planned because we used too much water.

“That’s okay, daddy. It was an experiment. Today … we should use more flour. And we should do one with more water to see what happens then.”

Okay, buddy. Sounds good. I’m in.

No videogames. No TV. Just experiments, curiosity, and the occasional mess.

There’s a video on snow that we may have to check out since school is cancelled.

How about you?

Where do you turn when it’s time for snow day play?

Related posts:

1. Another Snow Day for Science
2. Stories From Home.
3. One Step Forward …