As the month of August begins, if you haven’t taken time off yet, it’s time to stop being so busy and consider taking a vacation. Whether you are employed by a company or own your own business, you can’t afford not to opt out for at least a few days to recharge your batteries.

You may be thinking that it’s impossible to get away — too much work to do, the potential impact on clients and colleagues, etc. Yet, research done by the Boston Consulting Group published in Harvard Business Review in October 2009 showed that even consultants, whose extreme schedules are legendary, can take time off with no adverse effects. Those who did enjoyed many benefits including increased job satisfaction, better work/life balance and improved collaboration and communication with colleagues.

What can you do to ensure the world keeps turning while you are on vacation?

• Plan ahead.
  Choose the time you’ll take off carefully — set yourself up for success by carefully coordinating with clients and colleagues to be sure you can leave with a clear conscience. When I know I will be out of the office for any period of time, in addition to making sure I have coverage for the phones and e-mail, I often give my clients a “heads up” so they can let me know if they anticipate needing my help and I can take care of it before I leave.

• Use technology.
  Use an autoresponder for e-mail to let people know when you will return and whom they can contact in the meantime if they need to reach someone urgently. By the way, you may want to add an extra day to give yourself time to catch up when you get back.

• Guard your time off fiercely.
  You’ll be tempted to say yes to just one conference call or to delivering just one small project while you’re on vacation. Don’t let “vacation creep” ruin your time off — the time involved is always more than you think it will be and the fact that you have agreed to do whatever it is will be a distraction when you are trying for relaxation.

Readers, what other suggestions do you have?

TAGS: LinkedIn, taking time off, vacation

If you feel you can’t ever seem to get your inbox under control, you’re not alone.  But you have good reasons:

• The average business user receives 25 email messages per day; increasing 10% per year

• The average business user spends 2.6 hours per day reading and responding to email

• It takes 77 minutes a week for an employee to manage their mailbox, such as cleaning out old messages and filing old messages or attachments

• It takes 27 minutes for a user to delete or archive enough messages in order to be able to use the e-mail system again after hitting a “quota limit”

• It takes 8.2 minutes for a user to find an email that is older than two weeks

Source: Intermedia.net:

Some reflections:

• Pick a system, any system. Although I am no productivity expert (trust me!), I have implemented a system that works for me – most of the time.  There are many different systems, the key is to select one and then to use it consistently.

• Make your own rules. With your company culture in mind and in keeping with whatever email system you use, set your own standards regarding what is a reasonable time period for responding to messages.

• Just click “delete”. If someone forwards one of those “send this to 10 people or your nose will fall off” emails to you doesn’t mean you have to do it.

Readers, what other suggestions can you offer to keep the email dragon under control?

TAGS: email, LinkedIn, productivity

It’s a fact:  family owned businesses are a huge part of our country’s economy. 

It’s a fact:  family owned businesses usually come with built-in problems. 

It’s a fact:  experts say family owned businesses (generally) fail not because of economic issues but because family life and workplace life can create turmoil. 

Family owned businesses account for 60% of the nation’s employment, 78% of all new jobs and 50% of the country’s gross domestic product.  But a lot can go wrong in a family owned business so it’s important that we all understand these businesses’ unique struggles and support them because only about a third survives into the second generation. 

Family business success depends on forward-thinking and planning. The problem with family owned business succession plans is that the well-intended founder – the parent who made all the sacrifices – remembers the lean years while in most cases, the adult child, would-be successor doesn’t.  Instead, the child only recalls seeing over and over that Mom or Dad (or both) took risks, worked the hours, made the sacrifices and got the business to break even and have free cash flow. That’s why many 20-30 year family businesses – viable when the parents hand it over (usually to the son) – are run into the ground in two years. 

As my long time friend and colleague Dawn Fotopulos, a small business advocate explains:  “The bottom line is – it’s so hard to get a business profitable but takes just an ‘eye blink’ to destroy it and decades of hard work.” 

Fotopulos’ business is to improve the viability of small business in the United States. (http://www.smallbusinesshow2.com/dawn-fotopulos.html) She’s committed.  She knows what she’s talking about and definitely knows what she’s doing when it comes to educating small business owners for success. 

“The disconnect,” says Dawn, “is that the parents who made all of the sacrifices understand there are going to be lean years and tend to be conservative about how they spend their money.  They loathe spending money but want to give their kids everything they didn’t have.  They spoil the kids and the kids are of the mindset that the business gave them a nice life and is always going to be there.” 

There’s such truth in Dawn’s assessment.  When it comes to family owned businesses, the second generation isn’t of the frame of mind to save for a rainy day.  “When they take over the business”, Dawn says, “the mindset is often first that they must have the biggest and the best of everything – equipment, furniture, expensive environment – that the business may or may not need!”  She says too often she sees them start to run the cash position into the ground. “So if they lose a client or end up in a tough economic environment,” Dawn told me, “they can’t stand economic shocks.” 

It’s your money so take it personally ™ absolutely applies here.  In the case of a family owned business that’s failing, Dawn says part of the dilemma is pride.  Many in this generation wake up and say, “I deserve to have the best” and put themselves first instead of the business. “The family business must be viewed and treated like the third entity it is,” Dawn explains.  “The one that provides for them and their family and those they employ.” 

Next week:  Who should be the successor in a family owned business when the founders are no longer available, willing or capable of continuing to run it?   That’s definitely a mind over money matters choice. 

Here’s to your health and wealth.

TAGS: family businesses, family money, succession plans, Women and Money, work life balance

Join me for a conversation with Laura Vanderkam, author of the brand new book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

That number — 168 hours — is the amount of time you have each and every week. According to Laura, that’s plenty of time to work, play, sleep 8 hours a night (seriously!) and accomplish a lot more than you are now. Laura wants to help you spend your 168 hours doing things you love.

Read the rest of this post and listen to the podcast on my “College to Career” blog at MyPath.com…

If you’re feeling stressed, it may make you feel better to know you’re not alone.  The Cleveland Clinic, one of the foremost medical institutions in the U.S., devotes a whole page on its site to the topic of women and stress and makes the point that women may be even more susceptible to it than men are for a number of reasons.

We are not helping ourselves though.  A recent study by Retrevo Gadgetology showed consumers are allowing their meetings, their meals and even more personal moments (let’s not get into exactly what that means ─ if you’re curious, check the chart related to the “We Interrupt This Dinner for an Important Message” section!) to be interrupted by messages.  Constant interruptions like these certainly don’t allow us the time and space to concentrate on whatever it is we’re doing.  And, as a result, we’re not as successful at it.

I think it’s time to power down ─ and give ourselves a break.  Readers, what do you think?

TAGS: interruptions, LinkedIn, reducing stress, stress

As a guest personal money expert for my former employer CNN and HLN – I answer questions on financial issues that come to the network’s Help Desk . 

Dave from Pennsylvania, a 30 year old professional who wants to go back to school to get an education degree wanted to know how to make that economically feasible. 

My suggestion – start in his own backyard with his current employer.  Check to see if his company will pay for his education in part or in full.  Many companies offer tuition reimbursement for course work.  I also recommend that he consider virtual universities.  They’re a way to accomplish his back to school goal without interrupting his day job and income. 

For 30-somethings like Dave – this third decade of life is an ideal time to seek the services of a good certified financial planner.  In your 30s, life is becoming clearer – and more complicated – as returning to school for an enhanced degree or getting married or starting a family or buying a home – are your reality. 

To further help Dave and anyone who’s trying to make a decision that involves managing their money – if you don’t have a budget, it’s important to make one.   A budget is  just a spending plan that will give you real numbers about your ability to pay for what you need or determine what you want to do.  

A budget pie of how much of income should go to various expenses suggests:

• Housing  30%
• Transportation  18%
• Food 14%
• Debt 10%
• Savings 10%
• Everything else 11% 

It’s your money so take it personally ™.  

Here’s to your health and wealth.

Dr. Deborah Kolb, a thought leader in the area of women and negotiation and Carol’s partner in Negotiating Women, Inc., provides this guest post offering advice to women who want to negotiate more flexibility in their work schedules without damaging their careers:

Negotiating flexibility is not easy issues for a number of reasons.  First, most of organizations subscribe to the myth of the ‘ideal worker,’ who has no commitments outside of work, even though we know it no longer holds true for the vast majority.  That means that when anybody negotiates for flexibility, s/he has to deal with that myth always hanging in the background even if it is not formally on the table. Second, any negotiation on flexibility is not a onetime thing as exigencies of the work can cause even the best crafted agreement to erode.  Still, negotiation theory offers some insights that can help in these often highly charged dealings.

• Connect Your Interest to the Business Interest. You have an interest in working a flexible schedule.  Your boss has interests– good, legitimate reasons for denying your request.  She may be legitimately worried that the work will suffer.  She may be worried that this will start a precedent and that others will ask for the same ‘special treatment’ and that everybody’s work will suffer.  In my work, I have shown that if you can connect your interest to what is good for the business, you are more likely to get to yes.  In this situation, can you show how a flexible schedule enables you to serve customers better—can you deal with those in Singapore now where you couldn’t before? Will you have the quiet time to develop the marketing plan to present to the board?  If you can make these connections, then the precedent you model is about benefit to the individual and the business.

• Get The Parties Right. Although it appears that this is a negotiation between you and your boss, actually the ‘high value parties’, are the ones not at the table, those who are most likely affected by your proposed change in schedule.  They may be your peers, your subordinates, and/or your external or internal customers.  They may be the most resistant to change, fearing that they will have to pick up the slack.  It is in negotiations with them, that coming up with creative ways to rethink how the work is done may have the greatest payoff. And it is their support that may carry weight in your dealings with your boss.

• Benchmark Other Practices. If you can point to other successful examples of what you are proposing, it accomplishes several things.  First, it makes you feel more confident in your proposals, and if you are confident you are more likely to stay in the negotiations until you can find some mutual gain.  Second, the availability of credible data, makes it possible for your boss to justify her actions to herself and her superiors.  Currently, many organizations are experimenting with alternative working arrangements, among them major pharmaceutical firms so it should be easy to find examples of these practices and how they have paid off.

• Make the Agreement Contingent. Whatever agreement you reach, it can never be clear how it will work out from either side.  You may find that the schedule is more onerous than you anticipated or that you are missing out on key decisions.  On the work group side, they may find that the new arrangements are putting too much burden on them or that they are working so well that they want to negotiate further changes in how they do the work.  Any agreement should have both time and metrics built in—when will you, your boss, and the relevant stakeholders re-evaluate and what will be the bases of that assessment?

In all of these negotiations about flexibility, it is important to remember that it is a two level game—happening both at work and at home.

TAGS: flexibility, LinkedIn, Negotiation

How do you handle rejection, disappointment or failure? When should you solider on and when should you surrender?

That’s the topic we’re discussing on my 30/20 Vision podcast this week. Listen now and share your comments on this important topic!

TAGS: career advice, handling disappointment, life advice

“Modern moonlighting” has become an increasingly popular phenomenon among young professionals. It involves working a full-time job and pursuing other projects on the side.

Why are people doing this and how do you make it work? Listen in on my conversation with Jenny Blake, who works full-time at Google and runs a coaching and blogging business, LifeAfterCollege.org, on the side.

Listen to the podcast on my MyPath.com “College to Career” show now!

TAGS: career advice, changing jobs

A certain amount of guilt is a given for working mothers (and some fathers too!) ─ a nagging worry that they’re not spending enough time with their kids. Now, a new study, as Tara Parker Pope reports in the New York Times, finds that parents are spending a lot more time with their kids these days than they did fifteen years ago.

Given there are still only twenty four little hours in a day, how are women finding the time? It seems that they are spending less time cleaning and cooking. And, men are pitching in more with the parenting. Further, it seems that parents are spending more time than with their children as a couple rather than as individuals.

I’ve long been convinced that the success working women with children have is closely correlated to the willingness of their partners to shoulder an equitable share of the responsibility of parenting. No matter how talented and hard-working a women is, there’s a limit to even Superwoman’s stamina. But this trend is not only good for women, it’s good for men too because strong parent child relationships take time, effort and investment to build. Why should fathers lose out?

TAGS: LinkedIn, motherhood, parenting