An impressive golf score by a single player will be eclipsed by the score earned by a team in a best ball tournament. This impact of collaboration is understood by golfers. Can businesses similarly leverage the talents of their leaders to get the most of their human capital investment?

Every successful leader knows their industry, operation and strategy. But most miss a huge idled asset – collaboration.

Collaboration is not a matter of science, technology, finance, or business acumen. It’s a function of culture..

Unions have worked to provide enlightenment and social legislation to make U.S. businesses better places to work. Ongoing legal actions, legislative proposals, and bluster all challenge the status quo that labor and management would both like to change. But there is another point of view, as illustrated by these straightforward answers to often misunderstood (or misrepresented) aspects of the issue:

In March of 2020 – just one year ago, our lives changed. Borders closed, stores closed, restaurants closed their doors with some keeping their take-out windows open and business – well…some thrived and some faltered.

We remember where we were when we got the news. My husband and I had just arrived for a three-week vacation in a Hilton Head condo on the beach. It was a short vacation – the beach closed, the pools closed, the restaurants closed and there was just a scant number of open grocery stores.

Have you ever been confronted with a problem that literally threatened to sink your business, burdening you with so much uncertainty that you did not know where to start?
I remember one such situation particularly well. I was given the opportunity to jump from running 2 businesses to all 6 businesses of a company after the responsible VP/GM was suddenly terminated. The owner of the company looked at me and said, “It’s all yours. Fix it”.

Your best employee just accepted a new job. If you can’t reverse this loss (and maybe you shouldn’t try), how do you avoid the next one – and there will be a next one. To complicate what may be next, we’re now in an environment where job security is more uncertain and people are more receptive to job alternatives. Plus we’re early in a new year which is an annual venue for elevated turnover.