Small Business Resource Center
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How to Boost Your Small Business By Becoming a Government Contractor from US Chamber of Commerce
This article advises on pursuing and securing government contracts, focusing on determining the need for products and services, finding opportunities, looking for set-asides, preparing your bid, receiving an answer, what happens if you lose, obtaining a GSA Schedule contract, and considering subcontracting.
Introduction to Federal Government Contracting from USA.gov
This guide includes sections on common contracting terms, getting help with contracting, becoming a contractor, and searching for contract opportunities.
Find a Procurement Technical Assistance Center from Association of Procurement Technical Assistance Centers
Procurement Technical Assistance Center(PTACs) provide a wide range of government contracting help — most free of charge! Contact your local PTAC for government contracting help with topics such as determining suitability for contracting, securing necessary registrations, certifications, marketings, researching procurement histories, networking, identifying bid opportunities, proposal preparation, contract performance issues, and preparing for audit.
This Forbes article briefly explains 5 ways business owners can adapt their marketing strategies to the current crisis, including how to improve online presence and building relationships virtually.
Eight small business owners share how they are looking to their current customers to help support their business. Business owners discuss partnering with customers on content, encouraging reviews and testimonials, cultivating relationships, getting customers involved, adapting to fit customer needs, incorporating the big picture, taking part in a group brainstorm, and cultivating community.
16 Personalities from 16 Personalities
The Meyers-Briggs personality test is a useful tool for reflecting on one’s own behaviors and predispositions as a leader (and as a person), as well as for understanding different people’s ways of leading (and being). Taking the test yourself or encouraging employees to take it and then discussing the results may help your team understand each other better.
This blog post “covers three steps to help you understand the importance of business leadership and how to maintain a stand for your brand amidst COVID-19.” These include
1) Developing and marketing a vision
2) Improving transparency among employees
3) Starting or improving an online customer support system
The Exchange: Leadership and Covid-19 trauma from Reuters
This episode of a podcast from Reuters features an interview with Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg, a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping business leaders in crisis. She identifies 3 phases in a workplace in reaction to crises: emergency, regression, and recovery.
In the emergency phase, a team’s “energy rises and performance goes up,” and even though everyone is aware there is a crisis, “the teamwork feels quite extraordinary.” However, this “rush” doesn’t last forever, and eventually the team succumbs to the next phase.
In the regression phase, the team’s performance and energy fall, and “people become the worst version of themselves.” Wedell-Wedelsborg advises that in order to make it out of this phase, a leader will need to be very much in tune with “the underlying emotions in yourself and your team.” She advises leaders to take care to ask team members if they are doing okay, and to foster an environment where people can share emotions in the workplace. The risk of not doing this, she says, is for the team to lose their sense of motivation and the perspective of their mission.
In the recovery phase, the goal is to bring back the energy of the emergency phase and get rid of the “primitive” feelings of the regression phase. However, Wedell-Wedelsborg warns, “Don’t think of this recovery phase as just going back to work and adopting your old habits – don’t reopen, renew.” She calls this “a free New Year’s resolution round – you’re forced to make changes.”
Around 23:00 in the recording, she summarizes her advice to leaders in how to move from the regression phase to the recovery phase.
Leading into the Post-Covid Recovery from Harvard Business Review
This article features advice from Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg, a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping business leaders in crisis. She identifies 3 phases in a workplace in reaction to crises: emergency, regression, and recovery.
In the emergency phase, a team’s energy goes up. However, this “rush” doesn’t last forever, and eventually the team succumbs to the next phase.
In the regression phase, the team’s performance falls. Wedell-Wedelsborg advises that in order to make it out of this phase, a leader will need to be very much in tune with team’s emotions. She advises leaders to take care to foster an environment where people can share emotions in the workplace. The risk of not doing this, she says, is for the team to lose their sense of motivation and the perspective of their mission.
In the recovery phase, the goal is to bring back the energy of the emergency phase and get rid of the “primitive” feelings of the regression phase. However, Wedell-Wedelsborg warns not to think of the recovery phase as simply “back to normal,” but to “keep up the pressure to renew and rethink the future.”
The 2020 State of Remote Work from Buffer
Social media management platform Buffer surveyed remote workers for three years and uncovered helpful insights that small business owners can use to inform their business’s remote work strategy.
This resources is available as a transcript or in audio form. NPR’s Planet Money briefly chats with Liz Reynold’s of MIT’s Work of the Future task force about what work will look like post-pandemic. Included in the discussion are remote work, urban de-densification, the growing role of big businesses, and the forced adoption of automation.
This quick read from Salesforce gives small business owners some high-level tips to help inform “solution[s] that will help you future-proof your business.”
How Automation Can Help Your Small Business from Forbes
This article from Forbes provides a high-level overview of some of the parts of your business that could benefit from automation going forward.
This article discusses many of the reasons why a remote or “distributed” team could actually be far more beneficial to a business than an in-person team.
SCORE gives some useful pointers for keeping up your productivity as a remote worker while still maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
This article from SCORE gives some helpful tips for making sure work from home arrangements are both productive and healthy.
Is Your Company Actually Fighting Racism, or Just Talking About It? from Harvard Business Review
This article explains how to take a critical look at your company’s approach to dealing with the experience employees who are people of color, specifically within your business. It explores how to avoid being defensive, identify specific actions to take, handle inevitable discomfort, and be accountable, all with the goal of creating a better, more equitable, and ultimately more successful business.
Moving Beyond Diversity Toward Racial Equity from Harvard Business Review
Written by the President and CEO of Living Cities, this article explores the importance of racial equity as a goal rather than seeking diversity because of its buzzword status. Topics include “transforming our organizations to fit all people” rather than “trying to change some people to fit the organization,” discussions of power and its associated dynamics, the benefits of conflict, and an ongoing commitment to learning.
How U.S. Companies Can Support Employees of Color Through the Pandemic from Harvard Business Review
This article discusses the impacts of the pandemic and more long-standing inequities on people of color and provides guidance for how business leaders can support employees who are people of color at the team, organizational, and societal levels.
This article summarizes what a business model is and explains how small businesses can pivot their business models. It lists three pieces of advice for what to note before making changes.
This article contains suggestions for how to improve marketing and communications from the author, and it relays tips for generating business from a handful of business leaders. As such it contains a diversity of quotes from leaders in different industries.
Help Your Employees Manage Their Reentry Anxiety from Harvard Business Review
This article is particularly relevant for those who have medically vulnerable employees in their business. It provides suggestions for how to support employees who may not feel safe or be safe returning to the office.
This article from CNBC explores the realities of workspaces as we continue to confront the ongoing pandemic, and the effects that may have on company culture.
Forbes provides helpful tips on caring for your employees while still maintaining a healthy business during the COVID-19 pandemic. These recommendations fall into several categories: preventing the spread of illness, coordinating healthy business operations, managing COVID-19 positive results, prioritizing morale building efforts, and considering the financial and employment needs of staff. Outside of the CDC’s guidelines, this article does not link to specific resources, but it does provide many useful tips on how to approach leadership and HR.