Richard

Your burrito bowl might be getting bigger.

After uproar from customers alleging that Chipotle was serving smaller portions, the company’s CEO is addressing the concerns.

During a Q2 204 earnings call on Wednesday, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol emphasized to investors that “generous” portion sizes are a “core brand equity” at Chipotle and the complaints are being addressed.

Related: Wells Fargo Analysts Tested 75 Bowls at Chipotle — the Portion Sizes Were Wildly Inconsistent

“There was never a directive to provide less to our customers. Generous portion is a core brand equity of Chipotle. It always has been, and it always will be,” Niccol said. “With that said, getting the feedback caused us to relook at our execution across our entire system with the intention to always serve our guests delicious, fresh, custom burritos, and bulls with generous portions.”

Niccol added that the company is working on retraining employees at Chipotle locations where “outlier” customer satisfaction scores were received on portion sizes to ensure that all restaurants and employees are “consistently making bowls and burritos correctly.”

“Our guests expect this now more than ever, and we are committed to making this investment to reinforce that Chipotle stands for a generous amount of delicious, fresh food at fair prices for every customer visit,” he said, on the call.

Chipotle reported strong quarterly earnings, with an 8.7% increase in restaurant traffic and a net income of $455.7 million, compared to $341.8 million at the same time last year.

Related: Chipotle’s Robots Can Make Almost 200 Burrito Bowls an Hour

Last month, a report by a group of Wells Fargo analysts went viral after they ordered 75 burrito bowls the same way at eight different locations and found that portion sizes and weights of the bowls were wildly inconsistent.

“The portions have not gotten smaller,” Niccol said during an interview with Fortune in May. “We always want to give people big portions that get them excited about the food.”

Chipotle was up nearly 23% year over year as of Thursday afternoon.

For founders, building the right team is critical to lasting success. But the right one isn’t always what we assume it to be, and choosing wrong can prove detrimental at best to a start-up and ruinous at worst. In fact, in his 2021 Harvard Business Review article “Why Start-Ups Fail,” Tom Eisenmann, Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration, notes that “a broad set of stakeholders, including employees, strategic partners and investors, all can play a role in a venture’s downfall.” Put more bluntly, a “dream team” may end up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A critical component of this group should be a war chest of related experience, along with a high degree of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and on-the-ground maturity. Strong advisors will also integrate well with the cultural and leadership dynamics of a start-up — keeping it consistent with founders’ visions — and provide a non-biased and knowing perspective when offering direction on integral decisions.

For founders, the need for strong advisors early is more pronounced today than it was even five years ago. A quick look at Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capital 2024 makes it clear that many founders are now being funded at notably early stages of their careers, without a host of prior ownership cycles to reference. And there’s much on the line: According to Carta, the median early-stage seed check from venture capital firms in 2023 was $3.1 million, requiring greater founder-led financial responsibility earlier. Products, meanwhile, are continuing to become more specialized and complex, requiring a heightened level of subject matter expertise. All of this can increase the progress-based burn rate while shortening the time horizon for success.

All these dynamics make it even more imperative for founders to identify and hire advisory boards early on, and when they do, they must get it right.

Here are key ways of attracting, hiring and retaining the best.

1. Understand the puzzle and identify missing pieces

Every company is unique, with its own strengths and weaknesses. A 20-year-old founder may sport a high level of intelligence yet lack a track record of creating multiple companies and the necessary years of subject-matter-related development. An industry veteran, meanwhile, may be less in touch with next-gen consumer behavior. As a founder, it’s vital to assess your company’s early-stage landscape — identify areas of strength (the same qualities that likely led others to invest in you), spot the gaps, and hire advisors with particular relevant expertise to address them.

2. Develop an advisor-specific compensation system

A founder’s inclination may be to formalize an advisory team only when a company is big enough or far enough along and instead be inclined to form an informal team of familiar colleagues early on who offer services and support free of charge. While this may buy time and save money/dilution in the short term, the reality is that it will ultimately amount to a lower value-added during a critical period of early development. A better move is to create an advisory compensation system — from the start — so that a team feels truly invested in the company and, in turn, can be held accountable. That can include a percentage equity grant and associated timeline (usually one to two years). The amount to grant depends on two factors: the value-add of the advisor (time and expertise) and the stage of the company (the earlier on, the higher the grant).

Related: Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a Board of Advisors

3. Create a mutually agreed-upon goals list

As a founder, the more clarity you provide to an advisor, the more empowered they will be to add value. So, before signing an agreement, you and a prospective candidate(s) should create a set of goals and expectations. The latter can include an estimated number of hours dedicated per month, required percentage of attendance at meetings and general availability for advice and reference calls. Outlining goals will be more akin to a high-level job description or a position overview. It will also identify critical areas where a candidate plans to add value, along with a map of how they intend to execute accordingly.

4. Introduce advisory team members to each other and communicate frequently

Once your team is identified and hired, it’s essential to then host a meeting that allows members to get to know each other. The more each person feels a part, the more they will operate with investment. In addition, it’s important to remember that the sum is greater than its parts: a multi-member brain trust usually results in members devising better solutions than if they worked independently.

Also, provide regimented communication cycles (with updates) that offer realistic assessments of the current state of company endeavors. Sugarcoating a challenging experience will only hinder an advisory team from adding critical value.

Related: 5 Tips for Finding a Great Advisor for Your Start-up

5. Continue to evaluate your team, and don’t hesitate to make changes

As founders, we can become emotionally attached to advisors; after all, they are mentors, advocates and stewards who helped raise and nurture our “baby.” But as that infant grows, needs naturally change. A company may increase in size, pivot product category, or align with a new partnership vertical. Some advisors may be capable of growing with you throughout, but others will not, so they need to be assessed on a regimented basis. The right team is not always simply the available one.

As we view today’s founder through a 21^st-century lens, we are reminded that no one founding person or group of people can do it all. That doesn’t change the market demand and associated expectations, however. With make-or-break nearly always on the line, a properly established advisory team is often a foundational ingredient to lasting success, provided it’s built the right way.

Money can often be the barrier between being stuck where you are or breaking through to the next level. This includes having or not having a budget, using it properly, hidden revenue or even misaligned goals — all of which influence your growth trajectory. These four common secrets have helped my company elevate our clients to the next level.

1. Financial transparency for ROI

The first blindspot we often notice with new clients is not having a clear reporting connection between your tools, like ads and a CRM like HubSpot, to see which channels drive the most significant return on investment (ROI). Do you know your best-performing channels? Or your best-performing piece of sales copy? What is the most opened document that leads to a closed deal?

And we’re not just talking about marketing and sales; this applies to many connected platforms — for example, the closed-loop revenue or your ERP systems. When things are not connected, they are disjointed and siloed. You end up flying blind. Without connecting your marketing tools with your revenue tools, and with that being CRMs, finance platforms, or ERPs, to name a few, there is a disconnect, and the arms and legs end up moving in different directions.

Here’s a simple example we see all the time: If you knew that one channel drove more deals by a 75% faster conversion rate, wouldn’t you invest more time and energy in that channel than one that only had a conversion rate of 10%? Many people don’t want to share the revenue numbers within the company, but all of that information informs the other departments; without sharing these revenue numbers, your money secret is keeping it in hidden silos.

Related: I Hit $100 Million in Annual Revenue by Being More Transparent — Here Are the 3 Strategies That Helped Me Succeed

2. Strategic investment for avoiding blind spots

Another financial blindspot is not investing in marketing. We have had prospects come in with no budget and no internal marketing team, but we want to grow by 150% and spend a total of $1,000. I wish achieving growth like this was possible, but unfortunately, it’s not. The old adage that you get what you pay for, or it takes money to make money, speaks the truth. Your investment goals should match your growth goals. The amount of money invested should be measured not just by short-term, quick wins but also by looking at long-term investment to growth.

You would never measure an HR department strictly on the number of hires. However, looking at the whole picture of longevity amongst many other important KPIs, You would not use an HR department for a few months. It is something that is constant and needs care and attention. Marketing is no different — if you strictly only measure marketing by the number of leads, you are missing out on the full picture. Marketing helps push leads through nurture campaigns, creates automation, leads scoring, builds new campaigns and tests, supports sales enablement activities and many other components. A buying cycle is rarely a straight line to click and buy unless we’re discussing Amazon.

That said, everyone has budgets, margins and bumper lanes they need to stay in. I am by no means saying throw your budget to the wind, but your goal should match your budget. If you have modest growth goals, be realistic about the budget needed to get there. Set incremental micro goals but stay the course for long-term growth.

Related: You Won’t Have a Strong Budget Until You Follow These 5 Tips

3. Data-driven decisions to save money

Another money secret that costs companies is spending without the data to back it. We had a company inquire about a new website, a full blow-up, new navigation, new content, new page layouts, migration onto a new CMS, a new theme and the works. They said they had a $75,000 budget for the whole project. In theory, it sounds great, right? Willing to invest? Check. Has a budget? Check. Know what they want the end result to be? Check. But when we asked them the next question, they looked at us like we were crazy, “Do you have data that backs the changes you are looking to make?” Are you running a tool like Hotjar to see real user data behind how these proposed changes will impact your existing inquiries and the only source the sales team was currently using for leads?

The answer was no. When the heat map was overlaid, do you know what happened? Well, they were looking to build that new navigation out and replace the old one — nearly 90% of the traffic was going to two pages of their site directly from the navigation, both of which they had originally wanted to remove. In this case, it wasn’t just about having the money but also about making sure the decisions you make with the budget are informed by real data: user data, sales data, marketing data and more. The more informed you can be by closing the loop on your data, the better your end result will be.

Related: Want to Be Better at Decision Making? Here are 5 Steps to Better Data-Driven Business Decisions

4. Modern marketing channels to drive growth

What is likely costing you the most is using old-school channels without the ability to measure. Companies have spent the last decade on traditional marketing channels and are switching to digital. The company’s historical growth has relied on things like trade shows, print, postcards and online magazines. We ask what the ROI you have seen by each channel is, and rarely can they share a specific revenue number and say it is for brand awareness. Some of the budgets can be over 50 to 100 thousand dollars spent on these traditional methods, but there is no ROI attached, yet they continue them.

When the pandemic happened, we saw a massive influx in businesses shifting from once only boots on the ground to digital. The lockdown changed everything; there were no more trade shows, no more door knocking and no one picking up their mail or faxes daily. It made traditional selling channels challenging and obsolete and forced a new level of openness to try new ways to get the job done. In the example of running online magazine ads there are lots of ways to capture them, we can use UTM tracking, referral analysis or create a custom landing page for the offer and capture the leads directly. Without running them to a landing page or form, you rely only on the online publication for leads and analytics. We’ve had people show a list of just names, no emails to follow up with, or only show a random number of visitors to the page, not a single name. It’s important to know what they will provide for reporting and tracking when you publish or use traditional channels. The rule of thumb is to use connections and tools that leverage old-school methods into technology and not blindly spend on channels that cannot be measured.

Stop wasting time, energy and revenue on these blind spots. They have easy solutions, so you can avoid them and focus on growing your business!

Most businesses today believe that having a good manager is the only way to improve performance within a team and reduce turnover. This article presents five important skill sets for leading people that will enable you to achieve these goals while giving practical advice and examples of how to do this.

Once cultivated, such abilities will result in a motivated workforce always ready to give its all.

1. Create a culture of engagement

Creating a work environment where employees feel engaged with their jobs is key for both performance and retention. Engaged workers are more productive and innovative and, hence, likely to stick around longer. One way of promoting commitment is by encouraging joviality or active participation in all undertakings at work.

For instance, Google allows its staff members to spend 20% of their working hours on personal projects they are passionate about; thus far, this has resulted in the creation of game-changing products like Gmail and Google News, among others. This policy not only increases employee involvement but also fosters creativity and innovation throughout the company.

Foster team spirit through team-building activities and recognize achievements made, as well as provide opportunities where individuals can work on what interests them most.

Related: Why Everything You Know About Employee Engagement Is Wrong

2. Implement effective staffing strategies

Keeping a competitive edge requires effective staffing. Businesses can employ offshore and nearshore staffing strategies to achieve substantial savings (about 60% in contrast to domestic staffing). Cultural fit and close proximity are additional benefits of using nearshore staffs. You don’t only get top talent and savings, but also some staffing firms pay the staff competitive wadges generating a low turnover rate, while your company still saves around 60% that can be invested towards adding more people, marketing, research and development, etcetera.

For example, a US-based technology company can set up a development team in Mexico, which can cut costs by sixty percent without compromising on quality or increasing employee attrition within such teams.

Review your staffing requirements and consider near-shore staff options for hiring skilled professionals with maximum cost efficiency. Aim to foster a strong internal team culture based on shared values and goals.

3. Use AI for strategic staffing and reducing turnover

Generative AI has revolutionized business operations through tools that optimize decision-making and increase efficiency. Generative AI has significantly impacted HR and staffing departments, offering sophisticated tools to predict employee turnover rates accurately. These tools analyze a wide array of data, including employee engagement scores, performance metrics, and even external factors, to estimate the likelihood of an employee leaving the company. By identifying potential turnover risks early, HR professionals can implement targeted interventions to improve retention.

Efficiency and accuracy have greatly improved among companies that use generative AI for decision-making. For example, a company utilized AI to analyze staff satisfaction data and predict potential churns. After dealing with those highlighted issues, the entity managed to bring down its churn rate by 15%, hence increasing overall employee satisfaction.

Make decisions based on data when developing your staffing strategy by incorporating artificial intelligence tools. Predict which employees are likely to leave using predictive models that algorithms provided by AI powers. Also, find out who among all applicants would be most suitable for the job through analyzing their details using these same systems. Train your human resource personnel well enough so that they can effectively utilize such resources while keeping abreast of current developments in the field of artificial intelligence. This will ensure better engagement levels among staff members as well as lower staff turnover rates.

Related: 6 Steps to Building a Strong Company Culture

4. Create a shared reality for team collaboration

Collaboration and productivity can be enhanced if team members have a common perception of things. Cohesion and performance in teams can be improved by leaders who put into place measures to promote shared understanding as well as vision; such measures may include frequent team meetings, joint tools and collaborative software with goals that are aligned to the organization’s strategic plan.

For instance, Slack promotes shared reality within its widely dispersed teams through its communication platform. Regular updates, collaborative channels and clear objectives help keep everyone aligned and engaged.

Related: 7 Ways Collaboration Can Create a Successful Team

5. Promote work-life balance to boost employee well-being

Maintaining a life balance between work and other aspects can only ensure the health of the workers, job satisfaction and retention. Such leaders foster a supportive environment that makes employees feel appreciated and reduces stress levels.

Allow for flexible working arrangements, have regular breaks and help employees manage their workloads. Create an atmosphere where personal life is valued, which greatly boosts staff morale while still retaining them.

Conclusion

To achieve a business that is both resilient and innovative and ready for growth, pay attention to these five leadership skills as well as management trends.

Employing such tactics in your leadership style will improve your team’s performance and reduce turnover, which will lead to sustainable growth and innovation in your organization.

Mark Zuckerberg may be the founder of one of the biggest tech companies in the world — with a bank account to match — but that doesn’t mean being a public figure has been easy for him.

On the Meta-owned platform, Threads, Zuckerberg replied to a post that called out his age (19) when he founded Facebook in 2004. The now-billionaire said that, at the time, he was “awkward” when learning the ropes.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Calls Out Apple, Outlines Meta AI Strategy

“I was 19 and didn’t know anything about running a company, communicating publicly,” he wrote.

“Being awkward and getting negative feedback on how I came across definitely made me more careful and scripted,” Zuckerberg added. “Still not my best thing, but getting a bit more comfortable just being me as I get older.”

Zuckerberg’s followers applauded his honesty on the social platform in response.

“It feels like we’re growing up together,” one user said. “It’s both heartwarming and inspiring in a way.”

“You’re doing a great job,” another penned. “Every CEO can learn something from your experience in publicity.”

In 2018, Zuckerberg told Freakonomics Radio that he never intended to build a company and that he “was just trying to help connect people at colleges and a few schools.”

Related: Zuckerberg Sweeps Up $17 Million Estate in Hawaii

Meta’s CEO has made waves over the years with his changing public persona as he ages, which now includes a passion for MMA fighting, watersports, and being a father of three daughters.

Zuckerberg’s net worth as of Wednesday morning was an estimated $174 billion.

Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian is speaking out after thousands of flight cancelations left passengers stranded, delayed, and without luggage.

In a memo early Wednesday morning, Bastian told customers that he was hopeful the worst was over and systems should be up and running after last week’s CrowdStrike outage that affected one of Delta’s key crew tracking-related tools. Bastian also said in the memo that he’s read customers’ frustrated emails and apologized to those impacted.

Related: Delta Is Now Under Investigation as the Airline Continues to Cancel Flights After Mass Outage: ‘Lost a Customer for Life’

“While our initial efforts to stabilize the operations were difficult and frustratingly slow and complex, we have made good progress this week and the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us,” Bastian wrote. “We anticipate cancellations Wednesday to be minimal. Thursday is expected to be a normal day, with the airline fully recovered and operating at a traditional level of reliability.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Delta had canceled 41 flights — just 1% of its total flights for the day — and delayed 513. In comparison, on Tuesday, the airline had canceled 511 flights and delayed a whopping 1,685.

On Wednesday, the same day his memo was released, Bastian arrived in Paris ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, where Delta is the official airline for Team USA.

“Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery,” Delta told CNN in a statement. “As of Wednesday morning, Delta’s operations were returning to normal. Ed remains fully engaged with senior operations leaders.”

Related: CrowdStrike CEO Responds to Its Update Largest IT Outage in History

The airline said it has continued to provide affected customers with meals, accommodations, and ground transport in addition to vouchers, reimbursements, and SkyMiles.

Delta was down over 9% year over year as of Wednesday afternoon.

A decade ago, Nvidia was a major graphics card maker, vying with competitors like AMD and Intel for dominance. Now it’s an AI giant with 70% to 95% of the market share for AI chips, and the brains of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s also the best-performing stock with the highest return in the past 25 years.

Why did Nvidia invest in AI chips over 10 years ago, ahead of the competition? CEO Jensen Huang and board member Mark Stevens, Nvidia’s two largest individual shareholders, talked to Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha to explain what Botha called “one of the most remarkable business pivots in history.”

Nvidia’s original product was 3D graphics cards for PC games, but company leaders noticed by the mid-2000s that the PC market was hitting a growth limit.

Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Turned Down a Merger Offer in the Company’s Early Days, According to Insiders. Here’s Why.

“We felt we were always gonna be boxed into the PC gaming market and always knocking heads with Intel if we didn’t develop a brand new market that nobody else was in,” Stevens explained.

^{Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia. Photographer: Lionel Ng/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

That need for a new market intersected with a product Nvidia already had on hand: its graphics processor unit, or GPU, which could be used to power tasks outside of gaming. Researchers at universities across the world began exploring the graphics cards, eventually building advanced computers with them.

Related: Is It Too Late to Buy Nvidia? Former Morgan Stanley Strategist Says ‘Buy High, Sell Higher.’

Huang recalled meeting a quantum chemist in Taiwan who showed him a closet with a “giant array” of Nvidia’s GPUs on its shelves; house fans were rotating to keep the system cool.

“He said, ‘I built my own personal supercomputer.’ And he said to me that because of our work… he’s able to do his work in his lifetime,” Huang said.

Other researchers, like Meta AI chief Yann LeCun in New York, began reaching out to Nvidia about the computing power of its chips. Nvidia began considering the AI market when AI had yet to enter the mainstream and was a “zero billion dollar market” or a market that had yet to materialize.

“There was no guarantee that AI would ever really emerge because, keep in mind, AI had had many stops and starts over the last 40 years,” Stevens said. “I mean, AI has been around as a computer science concept for decades. But it had never really taken off as a huge market opportunity.”

Related: Nvidia Is ‘Slowly Becoming the IBM of the AI Era,’ According to the Leader of a $2 Billion AI Startup

Huang and other company leaders still believed in AI and decided to invest billions in the tech in the 2010s.

“This was a giant pivot for our company,” Huang said. “The company’s focus was steered away from its core business.”

Huang highlighted the extra cost, talent, and skills Nvidia had to account for with the pivot, as it affected the entire company. It took 10 to 15 years of effort, but that business decision led to Nvidia powering the AI revolution with an early ChatGPT partnership.

“Every CEO’s job is supposed to look around corners,” Huang said. “You want to be the person who believes the company can achieve more than the company believes it can.”

Related: How to Be a Billionaire By 25, According to a College Dropout Turned CEO Worth $1.6 Billion

Josh Kaufman is the bestselling author behind “The Personal MBA,” a business training book that sold 900,000 copies, and the speaker behind the 2013 TED Talk “The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything,” which has been viewed over 39 million times.

Kaufman says that the average person with an idea can earn $10,000 a month by starting their own business — no higher education required.

“I think it’s achievable for most people,” he told host Steven Bartlett in a July episode of The Diary of A CEO podcast.

Related: How to Be a Billionaire By 25, According to a College Dropout Turned CEO Worth $1.6 Billion

Kaufman explained that some first-time entrepreneurs think that starting a business requires a lot of new things to understand and that only people with a business education can do it. But, he says, you don’t need an MBA, which can cost up to $250,000 at top-ranked schools, to create a successful company.

“For better or worse, when adults decide that they’re interested in business, the first thing they do is go to Google… type in the letters MBA and start looking for graduate business school programs and I think that’s a mistake,” Kaufman said.

Three popular industries that MBA students go into after graduating are consulting, finance and accounting, and technology, according to a 2024 report from the Graduate Management Admission Council. Kaufman says if you’re trying to enter those industries, an MBA could be worth it as kind of an expensive interview. But for entrepreneurship, he said an MBA isn’t necessary.

Kaufman says would-be entrepreneurs can skip the MBA because although business is complex, it’s not complicated, and most ideas are “common sense and simple arithmetic.” So even though entrepreneurs need to know and handle complex situations, running a business isn’t about a six-figure degree — it’s about how someone wants to create value in the world, in Kaufman’s view.

Kaufman noted a prominent 2004 study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and said, “If you’re good enough to get in [to an MBA], you’re good enough to do well regardless.”

The First Questions to Ask When Thinking About Starting Your First Business (MBA or No MBA)

Kaufman says there are a few questions to start with when beginning your journey.

1. Is this a big enough problem that someone would pay money to solve it?

The answer will help you understand the market size for the idea, and its financial potential, he says. For example, if you were starting a candle-making business, you would think about why someone would buy a candle and at what price point.

“A lot of the things around value creation comes come down to making trade-offs between competing priorities,” Kaufman said. “The perfect product or the perfect offering would deliver every single thing that the customer would like and it would be free.”

Related: How to Start Your Dream Business This Weekend, According to a Tech CEO Worth $36 Million

2. How does your idea attract the attention of people who may want or need what this business provides?

Human beings are driven by certain fundamental drives, Kaufman says, so marketing could play into that.

“The packaging matters, the affiliation matters, the story matters,” Kaufman said.

3. How will you ask for sales and what does the process look like?

This is the part where money ideally comes in and business owners convince someone to become a customer.

The end goal of a sale isn’t just to get a customer, but to ensure that they’re happy with their purchase and to get them to keep buying for as long as possible.

“I think there’s an enormous amount of business knowledge and skill that you can develop on your own by understanding the most important concepts around what businesses are and how they work and using them in your day-to-day life, using it in the career that you already have, using it to start something new on your own,” Kaufman said.

Related: This One Talent Is ‘the Greatest Skill You Can Develop’ for Entrepreneurship, Says Professor Scott Galloway

Barbara Corcoran is well-known as a bubbly spitfire who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, especially on “Shark Tank.”

But you don’t need to be as extroverted as Corcoran to be successful in business. In fact, in a new Instagram post on Tuesday, Corcoran said that every successful business needs an introvert and an extrovert to make decisions.

Related: Barbara Corcoran on NAR Settlement: ‘It’s a Scary Time for Real Estate Agents’

The real estate maven says her founding business partner at the Corcoran Group, Esther Kaplan, was an “extreme introvert” and explained how she divided up the delegations in the business based on whose strengths played best to different roles.

“I did all the categories, the recruiting, the sales, the marketing, everything that a great extrovert naturally does well,” Corcoran explained. “And she did the control, the systems, the banking, the legal, everything that I couldn’t do. And together, we were a fabulous team.”

Corcoran called the combination of extrovert and introvert in leadership an “unbeatable combination.”

The “Shark Tank” star spoke last September about her decision to hire Kaplan back in 1973 in an Instagram video, when she admitted that she almost didn’t bring her on at first because she was so soft-spoken — until she looked inside her purse and saw how organized she was.

Related: Barbara Corcoran Asks These 3 Questions Before Hiring Someone New

“She had the tiniest tidiest filing system I ever saw, with partitions that were labeled all inside her purse. With a mind like that, I knew I wanted my business in her purse,” Corcoran said. “I opened a position for her on the spot and told her I was eager to take her under my wing and teach her everything she needed to know to sell.”

The pair ran the Corcoran Group together until Pamela Liebman took over from Kaplan and Corcoran as President and CEO of the company in 2000.

Disability Awareness Month is not just about acknowledging the hardships that come with having a disability — it’s also about recognizing the work of disabled people and how we can make physical spaces, policies and practices more accessible in the workplace.

I’ve lived with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, but I’ve never let it affect my corporate position for over two decades, and I’ve seen firsthand what true inclusion can do for an organization.

Related: How to Revolutionize Your Organization Through the Power of Inclusive Leadership

Here are three meaningful ways companies can observe Disability Awareness Month and make lasting changes:

1. Organizing educational workshops and training sessions

Team-building training and workshops are the best ways to celebrate Disability Awareness Month. Workshops can dispel myths and prejudices about people with disabilities and educate employees on appropriate etiquette and awareness when discussing and working with people with disabilities. This includes appropriate and inappropriate behavior and language, accessibility considerations and more. Workshops and training sessions can serve as the foundation for creating an inviting environment that can promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace.

• Bring in guest speakers: Invite experts, advocates or a person living with a disability to share their insight and experiences. Real-world stories can help employees better understand the difficulties and triumphs faced by people with disabilities. These events are also a way for employees with disabilities to be guest speakers, further enhance the dialogue and build a sense of community and belonging.
• Sensitization workshops: Conduct a workshop to educate employees on how to interact with people with disabilities and use correct terminology. The workshop should also create a safe environment where people can learn more about people with disabilities.

Employees will have a better understanding of disabilities, which can lead to more sympathetic and supportive work policies and better accommodation practices and policies within the workplace.

2. Heighten accessibility and accommodation practices

In honor of Disability Awareness Month, take a closer look at the current accessibility and accommodation practices within your company. Ensuring that your working environment, from the physical perspective, is universally accessible to everyone gives a foundation for creating an inclusive environment. Accommodation policies are intended to provide a barrier-free environment that allows people with disabilities to access employment, public services and facilities as independently as possible.

Accessible workplaces are not just about responding to minimum legal requirements; they ensure all employees can perform to the best of their abilities without unnecessary barriers.

• Accessibility audit: Have accessibility experts conduct assessments of the physical and electronic workplace. This will reveal where accessibility might be lacking, be it ramps and signs or websites and internal platforms that are more friendly for persons with vision or hearing impairments.
• Update accommodation policies: Frequently reevaluate your policies to ensure they are fully implemented across the workforce. Requests to update accommodation policies should not be met with friction — do not automatically refuse an accommodation request or have an inflexible policy that doesn’t allow exceptions. Implement a simple and straightforward procedure for employees to submit a request for accommodations via a dedicated portal with step-by-step instructions where they feel heard and supported. Doing this can alleviate potential aggression or harassment and create a more inclusive and supportive workplace environment. This can also lead to a great opportunity for empathy training for HR and upper management.
• Invest in assistive technologies: All employees should be provided with tools and gadgets that will enhance their productivity, such as screen readers, voice recognition technologies, and ergonomic office supplies.

Employers who make their places of work accessible to all consider this a good inclusiveness policy. Such actions would benefit not only the specified employees with disabilities but also all employees, as diversity is an aspect of mutual respect towards employees and results in higher morale and productivity.

Related: How to Embrace People With Disabilities In Your Business: A Disability Advocate Explains

3. Celebrate and recognize employee contributions by people with disabilities

Another effective strategy for observing Disability Awareness Month is to celebrate employees with disabilities. Recognition and appreciation can be given in various ways, including honors, awards and talent performance.

Recognition enlightens and accentuates a sense of worth that comes with having a disability among employees.

• Spotlight stories: Feature stories of employees with disabilities in company newsletters, social media and internal communication channels. Share their stories, accomplishments and contributions because they will help the team feel inspired and educated.
• Awards and recognition: Incorporate awards specifically devoted to honoring the hard work and achievements of all employees, including staff with disabilities.
• Talent showcases: Organize an event where employees have a platform to showcase their talents and skills, such as art, music, writing or any other artistry, to appreciate the diversity of talent within the organization.

Celebrating and recognizing the contributions of all employees boosts their morale and makes them feel like part of the team. It also sets an excellent opportunity to appreciate all forms of diversity in the workplace.

Conclusion

Disability Awareness Month affords companies the perfect avenue to increase inclusivity and support for their employees with various disability conditions. Ways to achieve this would be through educational workshops, raising office accessibility, and recognizing contributions by people with disabilities.

These would not only benefit the employees with disabilities but also truly enhance the organizational culture by making it more robust and much more cohesive. Embracing all these makes for real change in life, whereby each employee feels valued and can contribute at their best. I, being one who has gone through the challenges and triumphs of being in the corporate world while disabled, can attest to what a tremendous difference genuine inclusion makes.

Let this month not just be about awareness but about concretizing actions that will make life different for employees with disabilities. Together, we can build workplaces where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.