You need to set your goals and define your limits before the actual negotiation begins.  After you know your goals and limits, you can decide on your opening offer.  Your goals and limits carry you right to the end of the negotiation, enabling you to decide when to close a deal and when to walk away.  The very process of setting limits gives you power in a negotiation, because the process forces you to focus on what else you will do if you fail to reach an agreement.  I call that your or else.

-Michael C. Donaldson, Negotiating for Dummies

I like to do this exercise with people starting a new business venture--it's a great way to troubleshoot any future problems.  Basically, you're going to brainstorm potential mistakes you and/or your staff might make in the future.  Be brutally honest:  Where could you possibly screw up?  What could go wrong if all hell broke loose?  Then talk through how you would handle it.  You are proactively avoiding these mistakes by anticipating them ahead of time.  No one likes to imagine the "what-ifs," but it gives you greater piece of mind knowing you have a plan to handle them.

-Tabatha Coffey, Own It!

Once you have established specific goals, ongoing coaching is essential to developing your employees.  Enterprise [the car rental company] uses a coaching method known as SOS, which stands for "show, observe, and shape."  

• Show employees how to perform a task while explaining the steps required to complete it.
• Observe employees as they perform the task.
• Shape performance by providing feedback, additional resources, or opportunities to improve their skills.

-Kirk Kazanjian, Driving Loyalty

I believe management has to fight to maintain standards every day.  If a standard is not qualifiable (what you are supposed to do), quantifiable (when or how often you are supposed to do it), and verifiable (management can check to make sure it was done), it is not a standard.  What are yours?  And how are you communicating them?  If employees don't know what you want and expect, they aren't going to deliver.  I say it again: If standards are not being met, do not blame your employees or the economy.  Blame management.

- Jon Taffer, Raise the Bar

Without factual information and timely, candid feedback, teams quickly dissolve into weak, dependent groups, shifting responsibility and ownership for problems to those who are informed.  In many organizations, this results in a crippling "dependency syndrome," an upward delegation of problem-solving and conflict resolution.  Got a problem?  Give it to the boss to solve!

- John J. Murphy, Pulling Together