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If it’s Sunday, it’s quote day, but this isn’t just any Sunday. It’s the Sunday before Tax Day, 2008—unless you filed an extension as I did.

The challenge is for you to respond with another quote on a similar/connected topic or whatever it makes you think of.

“I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.” –David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes. (No lie, just spin. Too bad it won’t work for the rest of us.)

“The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.” –Will Rogers (More than 10 million and growing every year.)

“A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.” –Russell B. Long (I must not earn enough to warrant a loophole.)

Heard any great tax quotes lately?

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Everybody knows that leadership requires superb communication skills, both verbal and written. In fact, the better your ability to communicate the more likely you are to move forward and upward. Sadly, skilled writing is as rare as hen’s teeth and even adequate writing is getting harder to find.

Combine the poor writing skills with how often email is used (not that it should be) to communicate entire projects, instructions, even visions and corporate culture and you have the makings of disaster.

So I asked Anne Wayman from The Golden Pencil to guest post some guidelines to help you improve. And before you tell us that “you don’t have time for this,” tell us why you have time to clean up the messes made when your communications are misunderstood.

From Anne…
There’s something about a blank Word file that causes some of even the brightest people to freeze. Then, when they write, the result is often stiff, awkward and sometimes totally un-understandable.

You can avoid this kind of writing, even if you’re sure you don’t know how to get words on a page. Use these steps that professional writers often use:

• Just write whatever you need to write down as quickly as you can. This is called a rough draft by pros, and it’s likely to be just that – very rough, which is fine.
• Read what you wrote, making changes as you go. Chances are you’ll find some things you left out and some things you want to take out.
• Take a break – go get a cup of coffee, check your email, or, if it’s truly an important document and you’ve got some time, print it and hide it in your desk drawer for a day or a week.
• After the break, read it out loud to yourself. You may have to go out to the parking lot to do this well, but it’s worth it.

Sure you’ll feel awkward and you probably will want to find a place where no one can hear you, at least until you get used to the process. Be sure you take a pen or pencil along. I can guarantee you you’ll find things you want to change. It’s absolutely amazing what your ear will hear that your eye will never ever see.

This probably won’t turn you into a Pulitzer Prize winning author, but your memos and other writings will be understood and even, once and awhile, appreciated.

What do you do to give clarity to your writing?

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Yesterday you learned 5 things that a leader should do in a layoff, but what about after? Whether you think of yourself as a leader or a manager you need to deal not just with the casualties, but with the survivors—many of whom are walking wounded.

Morale and productivity go hand in hand and both usually go south when layoffs happen and the resulting empty offices are a constant reminder of the friends and colleagues lost in the storm. Even if they didn’t always pull their weight or weren’t that well-liked, being laid off erases all the bad leaving only positive memories uppermost in their minds.

Many large companies are more concerned with subletting empty space than with the effect of empty offices and shifting employees, which is very shortsighted. The more forward thinking ones bring in professionals to help with space reorganization—but the money spent on that can backfire if the company isn’t careful.

The problem is even more critical for smaller businesses where the loss of one or two people often creates a hole as big as hundreds do in a larger organization.

But it’s not hard to follow the lead of the designers in the article without spending the bucks.

1. Don’t leave the spaces, whether offices or cubicles, empty. If you do, they become a constant reminder of friends who are gone.
2. Reusing the spaces, equipment, furniture or stuff is fine, but not on a first come, first serve basis. Assign it based on real need, not seniority, and don’t play favorites.
3. To use the space in the most productive way bring your people together and brainstorm ideas.
4. Changes, such as a lounge or brainstorming area, can be done without expensive goodies.
5. Use imagination instead of money in changing/redecorating the company and reinventing extra spaces.
6. There is amazing art to be had in thrift stores and garage sales and you may have employees who love that kind of shopping.

Finally, this kind of creativity is fun and exciting; it not only saves money, but unites people in a common goal.

Like the alchemists of old, you can’t really turn a layoff into a positive event, but you can, with effort, convert it to an opportunity to move forward.

What would you do with extra space?

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‘Innovation’ is one of the main themes permeating recession-proofing advice, but if you don’t already have an innovation-friendly culture you need to start by rectifying that or it ain’t gonna happen.

As you work to fix any cultural problems you found, you can work on small innovations, too. Just don’t try and implement something that your culture won’t support. Innovation is about the freedom to fail as much as it is about the joy of succeeding. If you’ve trashed your managers or killed the messenger every time something didn’t work don’t expect to change their assumption that it will still happen or rebuild a viable trust level overnight.

And before you start moaning about spending money let’s remember that innovation is not always synonymous with expensive inventions or something that rocks your industry.

• Start with your business processes and open everything to consideration, discussion and improvement.
• Listen to your people—all of them.
  • Don’t make the mistake of thinking that ideas are the province of a certain level or education or position.
  • Administrative staff often knows where more of the speed bumps and bottlenecks are than their bosses, but they need to know that they’re safe before they’ll say anything.
• Rethink your customer care. No matter how good you think it is it can still be improved.
  • Look for ways to do and fix the stuff that you may not have bothered with in good times.
  • Listen to your CSRs because they are your pipeline to your customers.
  • Be proactive by asking your customers for feedback, instead of waiting for a complaint.
• Explore open innovation. It’s “about connecting with others to find new ideas and, often, to co-develop and co-market them.” Open innovation is not about outsourcing.

Remember, a slow-down or recession approach that’s only about cutting costs ignores the obvious. If you don’t innovate now you won’t have anything going for you when the the economy impoves—which it will as it always has.

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When the economy slows, Wall Street tends focus on cutting costs (of course, they do that in good times, too), but cutting is rarely enough put a company on a strong financial footing—only sales can do that.

And no matter what you’re selling or to whom, sales are far more cost effective when you focus on relationship, because at some point all customers are new. While acquiring a new customer can cost thousands, selling to those you already know or to whom you’re referred costs far less.

This, of course, assumes that your product did what it was supposed to do and your customer service solved any difficulties that arose.

As your sales people start mining your client lists they need to stay hyper-aware for any dissatisfaction, whether overt or covert and address it. In today’s world an unhappy customer is a far different animal than in the last downturn and can sink your sales efforts with a few clicks of his mouse. By the same token, a customer who appreciates your products and services is a far more powerful advocate than ever before.

The relationships you have with your customers are one of your most powerful shields when it comes to the whims of the market.

Leadership isn’t always fun, but leaders need to lead.

There are ominous rustlings in the media these days about layoffs and they’ll probably happen—some real and some self-fulfilling prophesy. As the boss you not only have to decide whether, but how.

‘Whether’ is decision only you can make, but ‘how’ is another matter, so here are 5 things to do if layoffs are here or in your future.

• This is not the time that you want rumors flying, so if you have to lay off people do it with honesty. If you haven’t been honest before now is the time to start; if you have been now is not the time to stop.
• Be candid with employees about the bad news and don’t hide behind your lawyers. Explain it simply and be sure that management takes its share of responsibility—your people aren’t stupid, they already know.
• Do everything you can to help those being laid off. Before you call a formal outplacement company consider if that’s the best use of your money. Unfortunately, outplacement staff often spend more time assuaging the executive team’s guilt than in helping the workers. If you do go this route, you need to check the company’s references carefully, not just with managers, but with people who were actually laid off to see what kind of assistance they received.
• Layoffs aren’t about nice words, they’re about real help and you should lead the action.
  • Get your entire management team, including you, on the phones.
  • Activate your networks.
  • Use LinkedIn and other social networking sites.
  • Host a job fair on site.
• Through all of this, be sure to invite workers who weren’t laid off to help. Remember that these are their friends and they’ll want to actively help, plus helping will go a long way to offsetting the guilt they’re feeling at staying.

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Don’t miss my other WW: avoiding the worst

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Don’t miss my other WW: the goal

Before you start grabbing all that great advice and slapping it willy-nilly on your company you need to take stock.

Take a step back and honestly look at your company’s culture and at yourself. This step is critical because you can’t change something of which you aren’t aware or that you don’t understand.

Make no mistake, whatever company culture you find is directly a product of your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)—whether you actively instigated it or enabled it through neglect.

To form an accurate picture of your culture you can’t just talk to your senior staff—you need a 360 degree vision of it, which means input from all levels of your company. If you’ve allowed yourself to become isolated, basing your decisions on what may be filtered information, you’ve found the first thing you need to change—and you need to accept that it’s not going to be easy.

First, look to yourself.

• Why and how did you allow it to happen?
• How long has it been going on?
• How valid or how filtered is the information you do get?
• Who is standing in your stead at the apex of the culture and what is that person’s MAP?

Next, how healthy is your culture? Indicators Abound.

• Do people feel comfortable sharing bad news or do they expect the messenger to be killed?
• How approachable are you—an open door policy that’s never used is a symptom, not a plus.
• Do the different departments work together or are they jockeying for position?
• In an ‘”us vs. them” world, do your people’s actions confirm their belief that ‘us’ are all their inside colleagues and your vendors and ‘them’ are the competition?

This may seem basic and time consuming, but in a world where it’s innovation and world-class customer service that’s can save your bacon in a downturn you need a strong handle on the basics—no matter how unpalatable they turn out to be.

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Sadly, the United States has lost its lead in many areas to Europe, and it seems like another is in the process of falling.

“Last week marked the 22nd anniversary of the glass ceiling’s entrance into our vernacular — a phrase which cleverly described the invisible but extensive impediments to women’s ascent into positions of senior leadership…shattering the ceiling once and for all remains an elusive goal.”

And that’s especially true in the Board room.

Europe is different. In 2003 Norway passed a law “requiring companies to fill 40 percent of corporate board seats with women by 2008,” and has succeeded; Spain passed a similar law with a goal of 2015.

“…in a 2007 study by Catalyst , which examined the financial results of 520 companies over a four-year period, it was found that companies with the highest numbers of women board directors outperformed those with the lowest. While European nations are bringing parity to their businesses, their gains are being measured in terms of both talent and the bottom line.”

It’s hard to understand US corporate reluctance, since the result of adding women does fall straight to the bottom line.

We have the talent; the payoff is proven; do we really need to wait for Europe to kick our tail before we wake up and do something?

What ideas do you have that could turn this around?

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