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Columbia Business Monthly

Viewpoints

Last Updated: Nov 01, 2017 02:12PM • Subscribe via RSS • ATOM

The Power Company

Nov 01, 2017 02:12PM ● By Emily Stevenson

We’ve all seen this SCANA communications breakdown business before. To paraphrase Casablanca’s police chief, I am shocked, shocked to see fraud at this establishment.

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Become A Fan Of Productive Failure

Nov 01, 2017 02:11PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Failure is productive when it leads to learning, and sometimes knowing what does not work is as important as knowing what does work. Productive failure is necessary in the process of discovery.

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A University For The Community: Communiversity

Nov 01, 2017 02:08PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Research documents the fact that college graduates are productive workers who give back to their communities, vote in elections, and live longer, healthier lives. In short, they are better citizens.

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Avoid The Sin Of Pleonasm

Nov 01, 2017 01:27PM ● By Emily Stevenson

No thinking business should be willing to give its competition an advantage, yet many do. They give their competitors an edge because they don’t exercise enough care in the written messages they send out.

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Why I Am Running For Governor

Nov 01, 2017 01:21PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Big change and real reform is hard. It always comes from the outside, from the grassroots up. That’s what must happen now. We must all get involved and help make it happen. If you don’t, it won’t happen.

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Richland School District 2: The Gift Of Language

Oct 04, 2017 09:15AM ● By Emily Stevenson

Through this program, Spanish-speaking 11th and 12th graders with strong grades are recruited and trained as volunteer interpreters for parents, students, teachers and district staff.

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Prepare to Fire Before You Hire

Oct 03, 2017 01:51PM ● By Emily Stevenson

The bottom line: There’s nothing enjoyable about employee terminations. Do your best to balance the individual’s interests and the company’s security and make prompt decisions.

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Get An Intern - But Do Your Homework First!

Oct 03, 2017 01:49PM ● By Emily Stevenson

While this information sounds enticing, taking the time to create quality internship programs is key to providing the most advantageous benefits for both the company and the intern.

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Are Your Customers Causing Turnover?

Oct 03, 2017 01:48PM ● By Emily Stevenson

To put it simply: unhappy customers are contributing to employee turnover, and for reasons that are independent of employee attitudes and satisfaction.

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Mother of All the Arts

Oct 03, 2017 01:46PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Movies about architecture, the good ones with well-developed plots and believable characters worth talking about, are rare. Now, however, we get Columbus, a highly praised movie showing the architecture of Columbus, Ind., as a character.

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How To Grow A Successful Company

Oct 02, 2017 11:02AM ● By Emily Stevenson

There is no owner’s manual for building a successful company, and every business you create will have its unique challenges.

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The Disease Of Corruption Is Infecting Our State

Oct 02, 2017 10:55AM ● By Emily Stevenson

This disease of corruption is bipartisan, contagious, and spreading.

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Dialysis to Despair: From Richard Nixon to Graham-Cassidy

Sep 25, 2017 09:47AM ● By Emily Stevenson

I’m just a number. Do those we elect to serve care about statistics? Does our Sen. Lindsay Graham care about at least one of his constituents? Richard Nixon did.

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The Next Surge of Main Street Entrepreneurship

Sep 01, 2017 04:04PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Among the latest entrepreneurs (willing to take a calculated risk in the Main Street District) are creative and successful types, wielding expertise and passion to fuel the resurgence of downtown Columbia.

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Enhancing the Candidate Experience

Sep 01, 2017 04:03PM ● By Emily Stevenson

One of the most impactful and cost-effective ways for an employer to differentiate itself from competitors is to enhance the candidate experience.

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BOOMTOWN

Sep 01, 2017 04:02PM ● By Emily Stevenson

Property taxes in Austin are collected at about half the rate Columbians pay, and the charge per kilowatt hour in a discount deal to encourage conservation and small usage of electric power is half what Columbians pay.

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S.C.’s Nuclear Meltdown and Crony Capitalism

Aug 31, 2017 08:47AM ● By Emily Stevenson

Over the last ten years, SCE&G has hit its customers with nine rate increases. Today, 20 percent of their customers’ bills goes to pay for the failed nuclear facilities.

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Motivations a critical factor in growing a business

Aug 31, 2017 08:43AM ● By Emily Stevenson

Whatever it is, the key to being successful and growing your business is to know why you are driven to succeed, own it, and plan to achieve it.

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Columbia Business Monthly
Higher Education System Grapples with Complex, Three-Legged Monster

Aug 31, 2017 08:30AM ● By Emily Stevenson

Schilz says the Commission’s overarching duty is to identify threats to the long-term stability of the state’s higher education system. The abatement situation threatens the integrity of the system’s collective funding model.

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Small Businesses Can Repel Malicious Attacks by Being Cyber-shrewd

Jul 03, 2017 09:48AM ● By Emily Stevenson

The bad actors (criminals) on the other side of cyberspace are multiplying and increasing their efficiencies too.

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Critique by job, compliment by person

Apr 03, 2017 04:25PM ● By Makayla Gay

Have you ever needed to deliver some correction to a team member, but been frustrated at their seeming inability to hear it? This can drain the momentum of any team. Our default wiring as humans is to attach more meaning to what we do than who we are. Consequentially, any negative comment about job performance is going to be met with resistance.

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Customization + Ecommerce = Customers

Jan 01, 2017 06:17PM ● By Makayla Gay

E-commerce is steadily taking more and more of the consumer’s wallet every year. For millennials and future generations, purchasing online is the norm, and traditional retail will simply have to adjust.

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Columbia Business Monthly