Blog entries for Dr. Larry Losoncy

Take Change by the Hand Before it Grabs You by the Throat

Larry Losoncy

ng>3 Big Benefits for You and Your Company

You will be equipped to make strategic changes to your business plan based upon employee needs, market forces, and cost analysis. The process, once initiated, can be replicated over and over, providing a reliable and quick method for staying current in this fast changing business climate. You will have a good ear to the ground as to how these changes are impacting employees and what can be done to assure employee retention and effectiveness.You will [...]

Make Thanksgiving More About People Than Things

Larry Losoncy

is from God.

Suggestion number two: consider serving or organizing dinner for some certain group of persons related to your business or your community, such are those who have retired from your company or those workers who live alone.

There was a beautiful custom for decades at one of the public golf courses in Tulsa, Oklahoma about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each year the course professional would serve dinner to the old timers on these two days. Play was free to everyone on [...]

There Are Leaders And Then There Are Leaders

Larry Losoncy

ire world is now paying the price for the lack of character in high places in the world of finance. There has been an awesome display of skill on the part of those who are getting rich from leading large banks to ruin and on the part of those politicians and officials who allowed it to happen. But who would want them for neighbors? By the same token, most of us have suffered under bosses who lacked the skill and knowledge to be in charge but who insisted on giving orders. In some places such cha [...]

Marketing Does Not a Leader Make

Larry Losoncy

that the candidate is honest, capable, talented, successful, personable, good with people, wise, decisive, motivational, loyal, good at communicating and team building and so on and so forth: in other words, everything anyone could ever want in the most wonderful of all leaders.

The candidate is "made real" to us without our ever having met, talked with or observed him or her except through the lens of a camera, the filter of a recording, a printed report, a picture or a televisi [...]

Too Efficient For Our Own Good

Larry Losoncy

success for those who have and those who have not is always there: those who have can become selfish and those who have not can become hateful. There is nothing new under the sun. Greed is a killer.

The current financial crisis highlights what has been happening in our country for a long time. People are stressed about money and all that goes with having money such as jobs, health care, homes and education. Greed and hate are on the rise.

You who own, lead, or manage com [...]

8 Qualities of Good Leadership or What it Takes to Cut the Mustard

Larry Losoncy

to achieve it.

Realistic

There is only one way for a leader to be realistic, and that is to be a good listener, a good observer, a person who puts high value on hearing both good news and bad.

Determined

No one wants to follow a Wishy-Washy!

Principled

Some people refer to principles as what makes us tick. Without core convictions the person in a leadership position will be overly influenced by a need to be accepted, popular or affirmed. One example of how thi [...]

Managing Stress Comes Naturally

Larry Losoncy

r loved ones or the doctor or an attorney. The denial of death in order to live each day is not total and airtight, but rather it is just enough to do this day well: very practical and efficient, this denial mechanism.

Managing the many other stresses that come to all of us each day simply follows the pattern already in place regarding the denial of death: focusing, compartmentalizing and being in the present moment. So why is it so difficult to manage stress? Because we have so many [...]

Adapt the Game Plan When Getting Beat

Larry Losoncy

a sea change underway all across the world, if we can let ourselves hear it. Some of the components, each mammoth in their own way but also contributing to global change on a scale unlike any others include:

Industrialization of several billion people.Drought encompassing huge parts of the earth and the earth's people.Instant communication as cell phones and internet technology spread virtually everywhere. Climate change on a scale not seen since the twelfth century.Political change.Finan [...]

Executive Leadership Worry Is a Three Dimensional Art

Larry Losoncy

is nothing we can do about the past or the future. Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. So why waste all that effort? Sufficient for the day are the trials thereof.

Executive leaders, to be any good to their companies and organizations, must indeed worry about the past and the future, not just the present. The company track record is vital for good credit. How that past is documented, protected and presented is a vital dimension of good business. The company's safety recor [...]

Necessity AND Flexibility Are the Mothers of Invention

Larry Losoncy

the business leader must resist the urge to panic, to become overly pessimistic, to behave as though he or she were helpless, or to wait for someone else to do something. Leaders don't get paid for doing nothing. They earn their keep when the chips are down. Right now the chips are down.

Flexibility can make the difference. Just clinging to the way things have always been done amounts to striking a helpless stance in the face of the problems affecting you and your workers.

Flexi [...]

The Four Day Work Week

Larry Losoncy

tices long advocated by unions and supported generally by leaders of the adult education movement. Three consecutive days off from work allows so much more usable time for adults to attend to other dimensions of their lives. Some of these include exercise, social interaction, care of family, involvement with church, leisure pursuits, vacation, recreation, sports and hobbies, community service, and education.

Many people have never found an eight hour five day work week to make sense. The [...]

Insist on Vacations and Short Getaways

Larry Losoncy

aptop filled with vital files. This approach is the equivalent of having one's cake and eating it too. The idea is to enjoy working while at the beach, in the cabin or next to the pool. And then there is the very widespread trend of getting less and less sleep in order to work longer and longer hours each day.

Business owners and managers would do well to insist that these trends be reversed in their workplaces for any number of reasons. Here are some of the reasons.

The human mind [...]

Business Stress Management and Gardens

Larry Losoncy

During the days of World War II when food became scarce and the money to buy food became even more scarce, there were Victory Gardens. Such gardens accomplish three very important results in the management of stress now, just as they did then.

First, gardens provide an outlet for physical release of stress. Physical work is a good way to release pent up stress. Working with plants and getting immersed in the quiet earth has a soothing effect, a centering and calming of the person' [...]

Address the Most Immediate Stress. Today it is Gasoline Prices

Larry Losoncy

ere is the suggestion for a plan of action.

1. Get your people together and do a quick brainstorm. How many people drive to work? How many people are interested to work together to keep the travel bill under control or to lower it?

2. Next: ask for suggestions. What ideas do your employees have to cope with this problem?

3. Next: ask everyone to think and talk about suggestions and strategies between now [...]

When It Comes To Stress The Little Things Get You

Larry Losoncy

odeling and who sometimes provide after-hours part time employment for your workers.

You can help reduce the stress of schedule by encouraging a flexible approach. When workers need to be late, miss half a day because of a school event, or leave early they should know in advance that they have your blessing.

The stress of money woes. Very few workers have too much money! Most can barely make ends meet. With gasoline prices inching towards $4 per gallon half of our country is approac [...]

Business Managers Do Preventive Health Maintenance?

Larry Losoncy

heads off having depressed employees who are tired and low on energy. And if that isn't enough good news, here is more: Since persons who experience increased occurrences of depression are 50% more likely to have heart trouble and diabetes, when you manage stress in the workplace you are helping to prevent two of the nation's top health problems! Make that three of the nation's top health problems: stress promotes cancer!

There are other ways of contributing to good health and [...]

Seven Key Tasks for Business Leaders

Larry Losoncy

ibility is important.

Business leaders could learn a great deal from watching the presidential campaigns and professional baseball.

The presidential campaigns are managed with an eye on each of these seven functions. The gathering and managing of people and money to make the campaigns viable is a work of art based on known principles. That is to say, it is both art and science. Chaotic as political campaigns appear to the naked eye, with people running helter skelter and the phones ringi [...]

Leader or Manager?

Larry Losoncy

that decisions are made by the people closest to the situation. A simple example is in ordering office supplies. The clerk in charge of that has more knowledge about supply use and frequency than the president of the company does. So the clerk should make the decisions about when and how much to reorder.

It is important that the right decisions are made. How do you make good decisions and avoid making bad ones? There is no sure method. It takes practice and re [...]

Is Consensus the Absence of Leadership?

Larry Losoncy

the company: what is the business plan? These decisions must be accepted and implemented by the work force, the customer, the vendors and all the other people associated with the business, no matter what opinions and viewpoints to the contrary. For a business to succeed, once a decision is reached everyone needs to move on and do their best to implement the decision.

The true test of a business leader, therefore, is twofold. First, the leader must make good decisions. As the saying goes, g [...]

Why Executive Leadership Training?

Larry Losoncy

comes the outstanding communicator. The person who worked hard to become proficient at planning becomes an exceptionally gifted planner. Why? Because training promotes reflection and focuses on learning from experience: your experience and that of others. Experience is the best teacher.

Reason #3: comparisons and motivation

Trainings allow the participants to measure themselves against their peers. When you are the number one person in your company, division or department you have no [...]