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 fascinating blog in BizJournals - "Mo. lawmakers want to reject part of stimulus" 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 receive 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: Silkin Facebook Page.

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