The Feds are doing it again.

I believe the Feds may be violating my third law of management-that is evaluation and accountability.

Two years ago, Obama signed into law the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. They allocated $1.5 billion to the states to spur small business. The money has now started to flow to the states - not bad -- it only took two years for this to happen. You can research it at this link, if you want. I hope the link works. If it does not, just Google the 2010 jobs act.

I have been pinging people in charge of the Fed money to determine where it is and if it is being used to spur small business. No one seems to know? The money comes from the Department of the Treasury and goes directly to the states. The Fed has a site where it lists how much money each state gets and who is the administrator. I am going to call each administrator and blog on the outcome.

I learned my third law of management from Berne Schepman. He was my boss and president of Envirotech. Many, many years ago, I gave him a budget for $1.2 million for a promotional program. He asked me, "Bob, how much money do you have in the budget to measure the effectiveness of your program?" I replied, "None." Schepman said, "Reduce your ad budget to $1.1 million and spend $100K evaluating your program." Thereafter, all my budgets included funds to evaluate the program results so we can learn from our successes and minmize our failures.

It is a novel management concept.