Small Business Owners are Optimistic About the Economy - True or False?

It's impossible to miss all the news reports about the sluggish state of the economy.  The reports are on every tv station, newspaper, radio station and most internet sites.  It's a reverberating drumbeat.  Small business owners are holding off on hiring new employees and investing in capital improvements to expand their businesses.  As a result, the economy has stalled.  Business owners are anxiously awaiting the results of the upcoming election.  We're hearing a lot of hype about business owners being pessimistic about the economy, but is this reality?

A good barometer for monitoring optimism is the "Business Books Best Seller List for Small Business and Entrepreneurship" on Amazon.com.  By reviewing the titles, you can get a sense of the areas that business owners are focused on for growing their business and their outlook. 

Here is the top 10 from the list as of this morning:


1. Align Expand and Succeed by Christine Kloser and Lynne Klippel
2. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins
3. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
4. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
5. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
6. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
7. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard
8. Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen, and Kenneth H. Blanchard
9. Do More Faster by Brad Feld and David Cohen
10. Rework - wireless version

9 Steps to Work Less and Do More - Book Review

We as a society are working smarter now, aren't we?  We have all this fantastic technology available. Many businesses have downsized and refocused on their core businesses.  Hasn't our productivity improved?  Not necessarily according to the Departmental of Labor (DOL). The DOL released a report in September 2010 that indicated labor productivity declined by 1.8% during the second quarter of 2010 compared to the first quarter, even though hours increased by 3.5% and output increased slightly by 1.6%.   This seems to indicate that we are working longer hours, yet our productivity is actually declining.  What can we do about it?  What is occurring here?  It has been ingrained in our minds that the longer and harder we work, the more we will produce.  Is this a fallacy?

I had an opportunity to read several chapters of the Get-It-Done-Guy's book called "9 Steps to Work Less and Do More" by Stever Robbins.  This book provided excellent insight on this very concept of working smarter.  It is an easy read and is written in such an engaging, humorous and insightful manner that it easily drew me in. 

Here are the nine steps:

Step 1 - Live and work on purpose
Step 2 - Stop procrastinating
Step 3 - Conquer your technology
Step 4 - Cultivate focus
Step 5 - Stay organized - mentally & physically
Step 6 - Don't waste time.
Step 7 - Streamline your tasks & Optimize them
Step 8 - Build stronger relationships
Step 9 - Leverage your strengths & achieve better results