Margaret Reynolds

Lately I have been studying masters. We have all heard of the Masters Golf Tournament, and when you google the word masters, stories about Charles Schwartsel, the latest golfer to put on the green jacket, pop up. Or how about the masters of art or music, Beethoven or  Picasso? Webster’s says a master is a noun and an adjective. A master …

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As hard working business professionals, it is easy to get caught up in what we know: how hard we work, how important something is to us, the nuances we think are valuable. We see things from our own perspective. However, the market doesn’t really care how we see it. At the end of the day, if we want customers to buy our goods and services, it is what the customers think that counts.

As business leaders, we admit that it is hard not to be wearing rose-colored glasses when it comes to assessing our teams. They work hard and invest a significant effort to deliver goods and services to the market. In addition, they are our work family, in many cases people we have coached and mentored over the years. We are proud of …

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Over twenty years ago, a mentor of mine, Irv Hockaday, former CEO at Hallmark Cards, Inc., once asked me, “Do you think that, or do you know that?” I have never forgotten the question. It is a game changer in my book. It is a question that stops a lot of leaders in their tracks. How much of what …

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Often overlooked is the importance of effective decision making. Each day every organization collectively makes dozens, even hundreds of decisions. Each of these individual decisions can either push the organization further along the focused path of strategy or put the “Whac-A-Mole Management” game into play. How can organizations improve the consistency and alignment in decision making? By establishing decision criteria. For an …

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Greetings! One of the things I have learned from you–my awesome clients–is that great leaders teach at every turn. They teach employees, they teach on the boards they serve, they teach at Church and even when they have a cup of coffee with colleagues. They impart things they have learned or read that they have …

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The overwhelming majority of companies have a blind side. It is born from a history of how things have been done as well as a focus on where they are going. Major companies have been taken out due to their blind side. Blockbuster was certainly well aware of Netflix by the time it went bankrupt, …

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Your organization is not functioning in isolation. It functions within an economy, industry, and geographical area that influence the opportunities and challenges it faces. To be effective, it is essential to be able to diagnose accurately the cause behind the symptoms of any hardship. Thus, it requires a macro or “big picture” perspective of the market served, as well as a …

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