THERE IS FISCAL SANITY IN MISSOURI: You can do the same.

In my never ending reading and research to keep up to date on what is going
on with our economy and the myriad of solutions being presented, I ran
across this facinating blog in BizJournals -
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/03/02/daily17.html

The state of Missouri actually turned down $133 million dollars from the
Federal Government that is part of the stimulus package. No, they didn't
turn it down because their coffers were full - in fact their coffers are far
from full. The state is in just as much budgetary difficulties as most any
other state in the union. But what they so aptly observed was that taking
the $133 million required, with all the strings attached, a commitment to
further expenditures that they could not afford. They refused to take a
short term "fix" that would end in in further long term difficulties.
Hooray for the Missouri legislators for understanding that there truly is no
"free lunch".

This parallels an article I read last week about an ambassador from an
African country who stated boldly that she was adamantly against her country
continuing to recieve economic aid from the United States. She pointed out
that her country had been receiving this aid for decades and it had done
little to nothing to improve her country - rather she felt that it hurt her
country greatly. Why? Because there was no incentive for her country to
figure out ways for her country to stand on its own two feet and develop
their economy. A great deal of the money ended up in the pockets of the
rulers and little ended up helping the population.

These two stories reminded me of a basic management and financial philosophy
that we teach our clients: rewarding production will get you more
production while, similarly, rewarding lack of production will simply get
you more of the same. We teach and provide bonus systems for staff that
provide incentives for each staff member and the office as a whole to be
more productive. Done correctly we regularly see significant increases in
individual and office wide production and greater net for the practice
owner. Using these bonus systems we've seen entire staff's take trips to
Hawaii or Mexico with each staff member making more money and the
doctor/owner greatly increasing his net and take home. Everybody wins.
They win because production is being incentivized and rewarded. It works!

So, if you want to control your own economy during this recession, if you
want to provide your own economic stimulus package try implementing bonus
systems that reward individual and office wide production and you'll see
production increase.

We'd love to hear from anyone who has tried such bonus systems and hear what
has worked best for you. Go to our discussion forum at: FaceBook


Larry Silver
President, Silkin
http://www.Silkinmanagementgroup.com