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Insights on leadership, entrepreneurialism and management

  • Your Problem Employee is The Dysfunctional-Functional Employee

    One of the biggest mistakes that I made while running my company Micrel for 37 years was to hang on to those employees who are extremely functional in that they produce a lot of high-quality work, but were dysfunctional...

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  • Making Every Day Your Best Day at Work

    The spouse of one of our employees contacted me regarding his wife, taking time from his work day to call and thank me. “Thank me? For what?” Enthusiastically he said, “Since my wife joined Micrel, she has become a...

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  • Begging for a Return to Respectful Communications

    Because we are all uniquely different human beings, it is not surprising that the chances are that most people are not going to see it our way. Very few of us hold the same view on almost any subject....

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  • Five Ways to Make Your Company More Employee-Centric

    I know many companies feel that if you don’t take care of your customer, somebody else will. At Micrel, the semiconductor company that I ran for 37 years, I told my employees that they were number one. One of...

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  • Picking your first Board of Directors

    Congratulations! You have grown your business to the point that you need a board of directors (BOD). The good news is that you have been successful enough to need a BOD. The bad news is that you need a...

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  • Episode 22: Key to hiring the best employees

    http://toughthingsfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/Episode-22-Key-to-hiring-the-best-employees.mp3Hiring really good employees predisposes your company toward success. But how do you do this? Ray Zinn knows how, having run the Silicon Valley semiconductor company with the lowest employee turnover rate.

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