The Daily Record (Baltimore)

Commentary: Before Getting 'Married,' Businesses Need to Court Each Other

If your business is not growing, then it is dying. It may be a slow, quiet death, but it is still dying. This powerful statement is a quote from entrepreneur Dr. Robert L. Wallace's latest book, Strategic Partnerships. The book's message is crystal clear. Survival of today's businesses is dependent upon the ability to leverage strategic partnerships.

Commentary: The Negotiating Table-Turning Problems Into Opportunities

In every conflict, there is a main issue, maybe more than one. When the parties take their conflict to court or arbitration, the main issues gets decided for one party or the other. But there are often many ancillary matters involved in a conflict, issues other than the main one. In this article I refer to these ancillary matters as concerns. These concerns can be as important for a party as the main issue, but usually don't get resolved much less addressed in court or elsewhere outside of me...

Commentary: Educated Investor-No Ivory Towers; No Egos

If Legg Mason and Citigroup really agreed to swap businesses based in part on the concept of conflict of interest, then it seems to me that no business of any type should to be able to build a product or develop a service and have its own sales force sell it. During the past several years, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the retiring Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson have been cracking down on brokerage firms that rewarded brokers for having their cu...

Commentary: Web Sightings-Web Site Connects Vacationers with Vacation Rentals Around Globe

During July and August, millions of vacationers will flock to destinations around the United States and the globe. One Web site is dedicated to matching potential vacationers and the owners of vacation rental properties. VRBO.com stands for Vacation Rentals By Owners and provides a simple way for vacation owners to advertise their properties and a low-cost way for vacationers to find rentals.

Commentary: Expertise, Experience Just Aren't Enough When Hiring Employees

When was the last time your company's senior executive team checked how the company fills its vacancies? If it follows the conventional approach, it may be progressively losing its competitive edge. Here is the test. Examine the jobs/careers section of your Web site. Typically, it will describe the position, state the qualifications required, and ask the applicant to provide resume and salary expectation. Look more closely at the qualifications. Most likely it is an elaboration of the baselin...

Eye On the Entrepreneur: Annapolis Entrepreneur Delivers Relief From Stress in Unlikely Places

Laurie Sears has just returned from a four-week trip to Uruguay. During that time, Sears traveled the length and breadth of the South American country as team leader of a Rotary Club's study exchange program. It was tough living out of suitcase, said Sears, a member of the Annapolis Rotary Club. We'd spend a day or two in one town, meet with the Rotary club, local government and business and then move on.

Commentary: 'Emotional Intelligence' at Trial

All of us, to one degree or another, continually appeal to the emotions of our listeners. Some people's emotional instincts are more fully developed; a few can even read people like a book and know intuitively how to respond. Such person's may be perceived as smooth operators or, in the current vernacular, as possessing emotional intelligence. Those who are not so blessed must make a concerted effort to watch and listen for the emotional responses of our listeners. Some scholars now recognize...

Commentary: Let's Have an Uncomfortable Conversation

The delightfully silly Groucho Marx once quipped that he wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have him as a member. The bon mot came to mind this week following Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s appallingly silly response to criticism about his recent fundraiser at a private club that's never had a black member.

Commentary: War Powers, War Lies: A Series Part Vi: War Off the Books

The chefs who cooked the Enron books well understood the principle: to make something disappear (a $1.2 billion loss, just to choose a wild example), have it occur off the books, on someone else's balance sheet. This approach works equally well if you want to make a war disappear. Say you're the president of a well-known North American country and don't want to have to take the hit for bombing or assassinating or overthrowing someone, or committing genocide or scorched-earth ecological destru...