Chaos Busters for Consultants and Advisors

MANAGEMENT GUIDE

Consultants & Advisors Use Chaos Busters

to build business and personal success!

Ask Yourself These 3 Questions

If you answer "Yes" to any or all of those 3 questions - Chaos Busters is for you!

Are you willing to take action to be more effective in your work?

Do you want to stop missing opportunities to reduce the stress in your life?

Do you want to spend more time with your loved ones?

Based on Research

Chaos Busters is based on research conducted on organizations that reported achieving extraordinary results using success strategies such as

Change Management

Total Quality Management

Business Process Reengineering

How Do I Use Chaos Busters?

  • Ask them straight up as questions
  • focus discussions and to provide a framework for priorities and action plans
  • explain - functions, strategies
  • facilitate - recruiting, effecting change, new employee orientation
  • identify critical issues
  • for personal effectiveness - find out the answer then pose the problem
  • as motivators - to challenge and stimulate teams
  • Chaos Busters will be the key to personal growth and success for your business
  • There are literally dozens of effective uses you will find for Chaos Busters...

Dear Friend,

Thank you for taking time to learn more about our management guide. It does not contain new theories about management but is a "meat and potatoes" version of proven, common sense tips - a compilation of simple management tips to help you end chaos in your business.

We had fun coming up with the name Chaos Busters as an "action" way to describe each of the 160 management tips and to underscore the notion that fixing problems in a way that they stay fixed can make your workplace less hectic and frustrating - maybe even making work "fun" again!

We welcome your comments and feedback. Our users report excellent results. We trust you will too.

Sincerely,

Don Schwerzler

Consultants & Advisors

Talking is sharing but listening is caring

  • as a diagnostic tool with new or potential clients
  • defense against scope-creep in consulting engagements
  • develop inter-disciplinary teams
  • as a training guide when doing organizational development projects
  • in helping your client prioritize issues and to enable you to gain a better understanding of your client’s expectations
  • Chaos Busters
    - a guide based on the old saying that “results follow effort and answers follow questions"

    “...our managers were fixing the same problems every week – it was like being in a deep rut."

    We have a distribution business that was started by my dad and grandfather.

    We have about 50 employees and like most family businesses, "planning" was not a high priority until I talked with Don Schwerzler from the Family Business Institute in Atlanta.

    I had called Don to some tips on how we might sign up for some family business succession training. Don laughed when I talked about how hard we were working yet we never seemed to get any better.

    Each week we fix problems only to find our managers fixing the same problems the next week - it was like being in a deep rut.

    Schwerzler said that we were like many family businesses - a lot of commotion but very little locomotion. He suggested that the best way to "beat the tyranny of routine" was to become more planful and that a smart first step would be to check out something called Chaos Busters that would help us to start working smarter.

    Chaos Busters is not a lot of "consultant talk" but 160 key business questions. It did not take long for my management team to read one of the questions and then to ask me "why don't we do that?"

    Many of the changes were very significant and I could not be more pleased. As Schwerzler suggested, I have gone from "working IN my business to working ON my business"! Chaos Busters doesn't cost - it pays!

    - Third generation family business owner in Jackson MS

    "... we have seen an increase in our consulting assignments..."

    I am a CPA and our firm has many family businesses as clients.

    I first heard about the Atlanta-based Family Business Institute in the Journal of Accountancy a magazine published by our trade organization, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). www.family-business-experts.com was featured as one of the ten best sites on the Internet - it is the web site for the Family Business Institute.

    I went to the site to see what the "family business experts" had to say and I was impressed with the amount of information that was there for the reading - some really great tips and strategies. They mentioned something called Chaos Busters - The Management Guide and it caught my attention so I ordered it - one of the best impulse items I ever purchased.

    Chaos Busters represents 160 tips for removing chaos from a business. We have started using it as an assessment tool when we are called in do to do consulting work with our clients. Not every question relates to every business - but many do. When a client calls for help with a particular problem we select some of the questions from Chaos Busters that would help resolve the problem. We use those questions to enable the client to gain some insights as to actions they can take.

    Clients where we have used Chaos Busters have reported some very interesting results and we have seen an increase in our consulting assignments since we have started asking better questions. That is a win-win situation for everyone! Chaos Busters - It is amazing how something so simple can be so effective.

    - Managing Partner in a CPA firm located in Dallas TX

    "...we would have saved so much money - it boggles my mind."

    We started our business in 1996 and this year we will exceed 50 million in sales.

    We grew fast, not necessarily well! The money was going out as fast as it was coming in. We called in some high priced consultants who in turn recommended some very expensive computer systems to create a fix. Over time we were able to work ourselves out of the mess and finally we were able to wean ourselves from the expensive consultants.

    By chance, I stumbled across Chaos Busters while surfing the Internet I ordered Chaos Busters and when I reviewed the 160 key business questions, I wondered if someone from our business wrote a book about our growth problems! Chaos Busters was like reading a roadmap of so many of the problems we had in our business because we never took time to build the infrastructure needed to support our rapid growth.

    If I had found Chaos Busters when we were first getting started in our business, we would have saved so much time and money - it boggles my mind.

    - Founder regional fast food restaurants Orlando FL

    "...basic business practices that we know about but tend to forget about."

    As a senior vice president with a large manufacturing company I am always looking for ways to better motivate our management team.

    One of my managers sent me an e-mail asking if I knew anything called Chaos Busters and I had not. When I took a few minutes to research this management guide I downloaded a copy and was pleasantly surprised.

    Chaos Busters had some really good tips - nothing really new per se, but basic business practices that we know about but tend to forget about. I started using a new question each week in our weekly management meetings to encourage the management team to be reviewing core business practices.

    One plant in Oregon used Chaos Busters to develop a matrix for doing a comprehensive SWOT ANALYSIS. That proved so successful that we asked each plant manager to do the same.

    The exercise has yielded some significant opportunities for improving the bottom line in every plant - it helped improve the year end bonus for everyone!

    Senior VP Manufacturing company Chicago IL

    "My son said it was... like a "Cliff Notes" version of his executive training program..."

    Our son graduated from a top notch college about three years ago and he went to work for a fortune 500 company. While he had several job offers, he made his decision based on the executive training program that the company offered.

    The excitement he had when he first joined the company started to diminish as the training program failed to provide the stimulation needed to keep the junior executives challenged and motivated. I meet once a month with a group of business owners - sort of a sounding board for each other. I mentioned my son's disappointment in the training program - how it did not seem to allow the higher motivated people to move through the training process faster.

    One of the members of the group suggested telling my son about Chaos Busters. I told my son about it and he ordered it. He said it was like a "CLIFF NOTES' version of his executive training program.

    He started using some of the questions during the training session and within two months a senior member of the management team called and asked if he would like to have her as his mentor.

    What a break that turned out to be! Two months later he was offered an opportunity that has put him on a fast track for increased responsibility.

    Proud Dad Boston MA

    Knowledge Is Power!

    "Successful leaders understand this simple truth.

    Creative genius is driven and inspired by a very simple secret.

    Success is not determined by people who know all the answers.

    Success results from people who Know The Right Questions To Ask!"

    Don Schwerzler
    Founder
    Family Business Institute


    Additional Tips for Using Chaos Busters

    Have a management meeting coming up and need a lively and thought provoking discussion topic to "light a fire"?

    Annual review coming up with a promising junior manager?

    New employee starting and you want to get them off to a rousing start?

    Meetings seem to lack focus and fire - not sure that everyone even has a song sheet - let along singing from the same one?

    Chaos Busters will give you that topic, that reminder, that exciting point to focus on...
    in just a few minutes!

    Chaos Busters Management Guide

    $24.95

    Buy now



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