Typical executives spend more than 20 percent of their time in meetings with five or more people. At the same time, surveys indicate that a majority of them are dissatisfied with the value and outcome of their meetings. There is a simple technique that takes only minutes (no pun intended) that can effortlessly eliminate some of the collisions, faux pas, cancellations, delays … [More]
The High-Speed Company
Bestselling author Jason Jennings believes that urgency and speed are keys to the growth of any business. Jennings draws on years of research and 11,000+ in-depth interviews with executives, business owners and CEOs across the country to uncover how successful leaders build a culture that supports constant innovation and growth. Writing in his trademark down-to-earth style, and … [More]
The Objective Leader
We are all subjective — it’s human nature. We overreact to situations; we judge people too quickly and unfairly; we take something personally when it was not really meant that way. As a result, we lose relationships, reputation, money and peace of mind. And in our ever-more-complex world, leaders must make decisions faster and with more conflicting information; widespread … [More]
Company-wide “Bad Mood”? Boost the Entrepreneurial Spirit
When a company is in a bad mood, the signs aren’t always overt. People aren’t biting each other’s heads off or glaring sullenly across the conference table. Instead, it feels like everyone is just … coasting. Rather than digging for solutions, they make a cursory effort and then lay the problem at their manager’s feet. They’re not cage-rattlers and idea-sharers; they’re “yes … [More]
The Ultimate Competitive Advantage
People are what sustain — or ruin — your brand. If your people are not excited about the company, indifferent or even alienated from it, your competitive advantage will disappear. When you promote a company of proactive and engaged employees who create a winning culture, sustain it, leverage it, and make it work no matter what comes your way, your business rises above the rest. … [More]
Fairness Is Overrated
During the 20 years Tim Stevens served as executive pastor at Granger Community Church near South Bend, Indiana, the ministry grew from a congregation of 300 to more than 5,000; from a staff of five to more than 130; with a preschool, restaurant, three campuses and more than 1,800 new churches planted in southern India. Stevens, now an executive with the Vanderbloemen Search … [More]
The 5 Choices
The time management experts at FranklinCovey share their five critical techniques for avoiding distractions and paying focused attention to our most important goals and tasks in our daily lives. Every day brings businesspeople a crushing wave of demands — not to mention the high-pressure demands of our jobs — that can be overwhelming and exhausting. The sheer number of … [More]
Think Agile
Funding falls apart. A similar product is unveiled by a more established company. A key employee jumps ship to work for a competitor. These are the unexpected obstacles that derail even the most promising new ventures. Entrepreneurs determined to keep up with today’s constantly changing business environment need to stay nimble enough to shift their strategies, products and … [More]
Critical Knowledge Transfer
When highly skilled subject matter experts, engineers and managers leave their organizations, they take with them years of hard-earned, experience-based knowledge — much of it undocumented and irreplaceable. Organizations can thereby lose a good part of their competitive advantage. The tsunami of “Boomer” retirements has created the most visible, urgent need to transfer such … [More]
Succession
Tichy draws on decades of hands-on experience working with CEOs and boards to provide a framework for building a smart, effective transition pipeline, whether for a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, a family business, a small startup or a nonprofit. Through revealing case studies like Hewlett Packard, IBM, Yahoo, P&G, Intel and J.C. Penney, he examines why some companies … [More]
Leading through Inspiration
Inspiration and motivation are two completely different concepts, but a majority of managers still make the mistake of interchanging the two. It’s easy to get lost in the semantics, but the difference can be boiled down to one simple observation: motivation can be manufactured, inspiration needs to be instilled. Money, job security and career advancement are all effective … [More]
Employee Cynicism: The ‘In’ Attitude that Hurts Business
In an age of cynicism and irony, Northwestern Mutual is a throwback to a more innocent time. The company is the antithesis of “cool.” It has the kind of culture in which people embrace plain suits and sincere handshakes, take pride in wearing achievement ribbons, kick off conferences with patriotic music. It’s the very portrait of wholesomeness and earnestness — the Boy Scout … [More]
Millennials & Management
As management ages and prepares to work longer than previous generations and Millennials join companies at steady rate, companies are suffering through tension and dissonance between Millennials and Boomers, and realizing that they can’t just wait for management to age out to fix it. This book addresses a very real concern of large and small businesses nationwide: how to … [More]
End the Performance Review
As a business consultant with organizations, both big and small, I regularly hear a litany of complaints about performance reviews or appraisals than range from “The formality of the appraisal stifles discussion” to “They are too infrequent” to “They are rarely followed up.” Please don’t get me wrong — I am not against performance feedback. In fact, I believe it is one of the … [More]
Navigate ‘Unsolvable’ Problems
Innovation. It’s a buzzword that’s so overused it’s tough to understand what it really means and how to capture its elusive spirit. We know we need more of it as businesses are increasingly challenged to produce an outcome that achieves seemingly irreconcilable goals, but we often receive conflicting advice on how to achieve it. When anyone tackles the topic of innovation, the … [More]
Even in the Matrix, Labor Does Have a Price
Matrix teams — formed by bringing together under a new project leader people who already report to another supervisor — is a common method of staffing projects. This is one alternative to outsourcing a project when a business has no team already available that has the requisite skill set. Matrix teams have their benefits and their challenges. There are pitfalls, however, that … [More]
The Alliance
The employer-employee relationship is broken. The old model of guaranteed long-term employment no longer works in a business environment defined by continuous change, but neither does a system in which every employee acts like a free agent. The solution? Stop thinking of employees as either family or free agents. Think of them instead as allies. Managers want employees to help … [More]
The Blind Spot in Sales Management
It’s a simple fact of business: Without sales, no one else downstream can do their jobs. Because of how vital sales are to a company, CEOs frequently tend to misuse their best people. There are three “sins” that minimize the sales management role, which ultimately holds the company back from achieving its growth. When they misallocate key players, small to medium-sized … [More]
