As the owner or top decision-maker in your company, some of these observations may be troubling to you:

Some of my people are very talented, but they seem uninspired by their job.

Customers don't seem to inspire my employees; customer are the focus of their complaints.

My partner is often mystified by my line of reasoning for decisions.

Lately, the hires I've made are not working out.  There must be a better way, one with a higher success rate.

I haven't dared to calculate the cost of hiring mistakes, but I'm sure it's enormous.

There seems to be a sort of iciness about the interaction among several of my key people.

My firm's culture is more adversarial than cooperative.

The Sales Force works hard but several of my top people seem to be in a slump.

New sales people seem to be unable to get price increases at some major accounts. Some of my experienced people are having the same trouble.

I don't have a big training budget. How am I to train my sales people on what they really need to know?

Do good customer service people make good sales people?

My manufacturing manager hasn't made a significant improvement in output or costs in two years. come to think of it, neither have the other managers.

I've heard that the U.S. will be thousands of people short in filling positions in the next 5 years. How am I going to compete for new workers, or hold on to the "keepers" I have now?

The turn-over in retail sales people is crippling my business. Some of the current staff seem to turn off customers.

We have three new positions I'd like to create. With no Human Resource people, I don't know where to turn.

I've heard that you should not hire anyone without testing them first. Won't testing get me cross-wise with the government?