Management

Greed is good. It's not just an iconic line spoken by Gordon Gekko, the fictional character played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street.

During tough times, leaders either fail to lead or rise above and end up with a trail of followers. Leading in good times is so much easier than leading in difficult times where the leaders' mettle is tried. When it comes to being a good leader, it's about inspiring the masses—not forcing authority.

When Cindy Hadfield was working as a consultant, setting up companies' accounting systems and training their personnel, she always got the same question: Where could they get checks that were compatible with their software?

Mergers and acquisitions, typically, are used to grow businesses and to provide and/or enhance service and product innovations. Companies also can gain access to new printing technologies or services by merging with a company or acquiring one that uses the desired technology.

Imagine rushing to an emergency room with severe stomach cramps. Without any examination, no knowledge of your medical history, or asking any questions about your symptoms, a doctor who has never seen you before says, "I know exactly what's wrong" and prescribes a strong medication. This could be considered malpractice.

Often the bearer of bad news, human resources employees can be the most feared and loathed people at a company.

Now that the worst of the recession is behind us, it's time to think about actually growing the business again. And that means investing in the improvement of the sales force. Most astute principals and chief sales officers realize that in this very competitive economic environment, those companies who sell better than the rest will take market share away from their less effective competitors.

Time to crank up production? Get that place running like a well-oiled machine?

Some things are better left unsaid. Just ask Bill Doehler, executive vice president of Edison, New Jersey-based Prodigital Printing, A Consortium Company. When asked how he ended up in the printing industry, Doehler responded, "It's a complicated and exquisitely boring story best told from a barstool."

If serving your customers well is the goal of your organization, start with your organization's ability to execute its core competency. For a retailer that may mean excelling at the logistics necessary to get goods in your store in a cost-effective manner and never having an empty shelf. For the service sector, it might mean dispatch logistics on well-stocked service vehicles with highly trained service persons. For the manufacturing sector, it might be producing defect-free goods on time and shipping the product on schedule.