It’s time to turn those innovation initiatives towards your org chart and create new business organizational structures.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can tip their hat to many of the truly groundbreaking developments of the Industrial Age. But even the staunchest history buff would agree that, while remarkable for their time, those innovations would be antiquated at best in today’s business landscape. So why do the vast majority of companies continue with an employee hierarchy that wouldn’t seem out of place in a museum? In this post at GigaOM Dave Kashen, founder of Unleashed, points to examples of new business organizational structures and explains why you should consider adopting one.

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CEO coach and leadership advisor Mike Myatt explains how replacing inefficient business processes with more effective, simplified versions can be the most impactful thing you do all year.

Process. Just the mere use of the word can spread fear and panic in the workplace. This sad reality exists for a reason — 100% of companies unnecessarily suffer from a process problem.

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Instagram’s gift to software companies this holiday season was a lesson in exactly how NOT to handle privacy policy and terms of service updates. Here are three tips for getting it right.

In the SaaS or software legal community, there’s a growing trend toward plain English drafting of terms of service agreements, privacy policies, etc. that urges attorneys and in-house counsel to write these documents in a clear and simple manner. Unfortunately, it seems that Instagram’s legal department missed the memo.

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Read about the nine warning signs of impending corporate failure and what you can do to halt the decline.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, offers nine signs of corporate failure in a post at the HBR Blog Network.

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Do you feel lucky? The “Growth Guy” Verne Harnish explains why in order to maximize your ROI what you really need to be focusing on is your ROL — return on luck.

Hunkering down in year-end strategic planning sessions, you and your team are probably thinking hard about what’s next for the economy and how that will affect your business.

In the process, stay laser focused on maximizing what Jim Collins, in his book Great by Choice, calls your “return on luck” (ROL) – what I consider one of the most important business concepts ever articulated and critical to maximizing your return on investment (ROI).

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Read startup legal advice and protect yourself now to avoid pain and legal wrangling later.

Ryan Bowers, founder of RFPattorney.com, offers startup legal advice in a guest post at VentureBeat.

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In this final post in our three-part HR roundtable series, our experts explain which HR tools and software make the biggest impact on expansion-stage companies.

When it comes to companies operating at the expansion stage, efficiency is the name of the game, and HR can play a major role in eliminating administrative work and streamlining procedures. Especially if they have the right tools.

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In this second post in a three-part series, our HR roundtable turns its attention to the biggest expansion-stage pain point HR can help address.

The benefits the right HR pro can bring to your organization go far beyond conducting annual reviews and handing out the employee handbook. HR can help plan and implement major initiatives, create and foster company-wide alignment, and, when necessary, take a step back and evaluate your company’s performance and direction. In short, it can play an integral part in helping your business grow.

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In this first of a three-part series, we’ve gathered four of the best HR experts around to shed light on some of the top HR issues and challenges facing expansion-stage companies.

The HR Question: It’s something that all startup and expansion-stage companies have to deal with. Founders and CEOs may recognize how central a healthy company culture and recruiting strategy are to growth and success, but when it comes to establishing human resources policies and procedures their eyes tend to glaze over quicker than you can say “compliance”.

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Leave business plans for the last generation. Focus on assembling a team that can get you to market as fast as possible.

Minda Zetlin, president of the American Society of Journalists, says that business plans are a waste of your time.

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