As part of our assignment for attending the Mentor Plus® Consulting Accountants’ RoundTable (CART) meeting last month, Craig Underhill and I read Patrick Lencioni’s book The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. The book, like all Lencioni books, does a great job of using a business fable to make a point. According to Lencioni, the three signs are : “Anonymity: People need to be understood and appreciated by someone in a position of authority; Irrelevance: Everyone needs to know their job matters to someone; Immeasurement: Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution …

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Proceed with caution.  Does this sound familiar?  We have seen an uptick in wine sales in 2010 when compared to 2009.  However, before we start celebrating, we need to dig deeper and understand what is happening.  When you begin to look further you will find that 2010 looks like the last half of 2008 when we saw the recession hit the industry hard. 

We are at a critical stage in the …

Our recent rainfall has given me my first exposure to flood warnings in Napa.  I can honestly say I have never lived in a place where you were invited to go build your own sandbags by city officials. Once I got over my initial confusion about where in the world to put sandbags (do they go by the front door, outside my garage, near the windows?), I had a rather frightening read of the streets that would be impacted in the event of a flood (I think I am in the Phase 4 flood zone), and then I started to think about a business equivalent.

Wouldn’t it …