Growing up in Massachusetts I was well versed on the story of the Salem with trials in the town on the north shore of the east coast of the Bay State. But like many things in your backyard, I have only been there once, and that was just a few years ago. The story of the witch hunt came back to mind as I read The Crucible, the play written by Arthur Miller in the 1950’s. Little did I think beforehand I would find lessons of business as well as life in its pages.

Miller’s play was written at the time of anti-Communist sentiment and inquisitions in Washington DC, and these events inspired Miller to write The Crucible as he saw parallels to the inquisition of a few hundred years earlier. The book version of the play has a detailed introduction describing both time periods and how the play came into being, and is an excellent context to the play as well as a recap of history.

My greatest take-away from the play is a quest for the truth. It is needless to say the entirety of the witch trials were based on hearsay and emotion and not the truth. This is not to say business should be totally devoid of emotion or compassion, rather in the face of insanity and chaos that can slip into a business setting, a quest toward facts will more likely than not be the best path to take.

Another take-away from the play is considering the impact of your actions on your environment. Even if a decision you might make is unpopular and pursuing its resolution is the best course to take, you can take steps to minimize its impact on the community you are in. This can be everything from being completely covert to completely transparent. The way information is delivered as well can satisfy those who may not agree with the decision. Sometimes the medium is the message.

Speaking of community, I read this book as it was a gift from Chicago’s One Book, One Chicago program. This is an excellent promotion of literacy around the Windy City where thousands of people are reading the same book at the same time!

I enjoyed The Crucible and recommend it to anyone. It is a well-written story accurately retelling a dark period of the early history of the US. Its script format helps the reader get deeper into the characters and see the story as someone living at that time. Though Halloween has passed, read it now, and then re-read it next October.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Last night I attended TECH cocktail 6 (TC6) in Chicago, which was attended by hundreds in the tech, online and entrepreneurial community. The breadth of people in attendance made it a successful event, and I met a variety of people I hope to reconnect with in the future. I’d like to think part of the success of the night was my preparation, making sure I was mentally and physically prepared for the event.

Physically you say? Yes – I consider what I wore and carried with me essential for the event. Here’s what I did to prepare for TC6:

• Get my head shaved earlier in the day at The 316 Club
• Pickup my blazer from the dry cleaners
• Eat beforehand – juggling a drink and food is hard to do at a crowded event
• Re-read John Wall’s post The Case for Drinking at the Ronin Marketeer blog
• Carry plenty of my business cards in my front right blazer pocket
• Carry my Moleskine notebook in my inside blazer pocket, and lucky pen in my shirt pocket
• Bring my new folding reading glasses from Peepers.com in my pants pocket
• Wear my green Omniture scarf made by my client Sports Scarf – a promotion at TC6 was giving prizes for people who wore green (they can make a scarf for your company too!)
• Carry a new box of Frisk mints
• Get cash for when the bar closes
• Check my fly – yes, wearing lined pants gives guys a false sense it is zipped
• Walk through my elevator pitch in my mind as I walked from the "L" stop to the venue, trying not to move my lips

I commonly follow these steps for most all networking events. Do you have a checklist or ritual you follow?

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Having the best tools to get work done for my clients is what I strive for. Paying for them is sometimes a challenge, taking all other costs I have into consideration. This is where I have to justify if the tool, whether is is hardware, software or what have you, will make me more productive or give me a competitive advantage.

As a small business owner I have the luxury of making these decisions. Over the years of working for others, this decision making varied. Sometimes my immediate manager would make the decision. In this case the request process was generally fair, especially for the managers who actually knew what I did on a daily basis.

Some of the companies I worked for – usually the larger ones – made these decisions based on blanket policies that set justification based on your title or position and not on business need. Such a policy assumes upper management are typically the ones that need and will use more advanced tools. Whether or not they actually use them at all or to their fullest is more than likely never followed up on. If you try getting any particular tool whose distribution was based on such arcane rules – forget about it, no matter how well you are able to justify its need it will fail.

I have personally encountered this over the years in requests for business cards, email access, software, access to the company’s VPN to work from home, a notebook computer (when I was traveling for work), a decent-sized monitor and a mobile device for email. Though these requests spanned a period of almost 2 decades, I continue to hear such stories today from others.

Such policies are driven by the desire to control costs, and the only costs being monitored are cash expenditures. Opportunity cost is never usually taken into consideration. How much less productive is an employee when they do not have a tool to be more efficient? How about their overall team? Or how about opportunities lost when people are not able to get in touch with people outside the office who do not have a mobile device to reach co-workers? And don’t forget the cost of rehiring an employee who leaves a job if they feel they are not respected to handle the "fancy toys" their managers have.

With the season of generosity around the corner, managers and companies should take a hard look at what it really costs to be in business and not be penny wise and pound foolish.

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No matter how beautiful or comforting a home is, if it is not built on a solid foundation it will surely crumble. This analogy can be used for many things in our world, from ourselves to families to businesses to sports teams. Having a strong foundation and core values will provide a solid base for everything else in life. It’s not that everything else will come automatically, as anything in life worth achieving is worth working for.

There are many books published on the topic of motivation. Some speak more scientifically and others more organizationally. I have read a few of these books myself, as a self-employed entrepreneur keeping motivated is key. After reading the book Perpetual Motivation by Dave Durand, I learned to take a step back and look inward to find the motivators to keep me positive and progressing.

Perpetual Motivation, like many motivational books and stories, has an equation to help keep you going. The formula in the book was different from others I have seen, as it seemed more humbling and therefore more achievable. The equation states motivation is the result of balance plus influence plus creativity plus a sense of humor minus runaway self-esteem. Where Durand does a better job of describing all of these than myself, his exclusion of it being all about “me” and being about family and friends is a refreshing approach.

My greatest take-away from the book is focusing on the pursuit of balance. This goes contrary to the common notion where you must work hard and be focused on work and from that rewards will come, everything else being a distraction. The catalyst for many entrepreneurs is independence and calling the shots, allowing them greater control over their work and personal time, and hopefully more of the latter. However the demand of the job, revenue and success make the personal venture at times comparable to that previous full-time job. Durand reminds us that the pursuit of balance is necessary to keep everything in perspective and equal.

I recommend any of my readers to pick up a copy of Perpetual Motivation. It is a good read and packed with real world examples and stories and does not have excessive fluff or hype (just maybe one too many references to the Green Bay Packers!). I enjoyed reading this book and its unique perspective.

Ironically I had this book sitting on my bookshelf for sometime, and honestly I don’t recall where I got it, if I bought it or if it was a gift. The fact I am now going through and reading all of these books I have accumulated itself shows my belief in the message from this book.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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