Strategic Leadership: The difference between good and great

As regular blog readers you may know that from time to time we publish interviews with amazing leaders that have accomplished a track record of high performance while leaving a legacy. Some of you ask how do I get interviews with such high profile people like Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A or Joe Scarlett of the …

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Three: The number of rules strategic leaders must know

For the last few years my message has been that growth is not only possible, but preferable, even considering the hardships we have to overcome to achieve it. Sound obvious? And yet, far too many companies are exhausted trying to fix problems caused by today’s market with traditional approaches, reluctant to change their attitudes and …

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Seven Things to Ask Before You Hire a Strategic Planner

You may be aware that while I help companies do strategic planning, I really don’t like to use the term, “strategic planning”. Seems odd, doesn’t it? The reason is that far too many people are in the strategic planning business and, in my humble opinion, it is confused with meeting facilitation and/or process. Let me …

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An “Ah-ha” moment in Strategic Leadership

We know we shouldn’t take anything for granted, but we do. We like to be able to count on today unfolding the way we planned; that our experiences will be as helpful tomorrow as they were yesterday in navigating life; that we will have the support of loved ones. Yet the world changes around us …

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Do YOU have great customer service?

What makes great customer service? Hire friendly people, teach them how to interact with customers and encourage customers to tweet about how great the service is? If you agree then you and Go Daddy have a lot in common. Unfortunately, customer service misses the mark no matter how nice the people are if you can’t …

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Adversity to Advantage

Ever wonder what a glass of lemonade made out of lemons looks like? When your company is getting pounded by a slow economy, how do you come up with a win-win solution that saves you money and makes customers happy? Just ask Dina Dwyer-Owens, CEO of The Dwyer Group and author of R.I.C.H. (Respect, Integrity, …

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The Art of Thinking

Recently, I was in New Orleans and couldn’t resist touring one of their beautiful old cemeteries. They had people interred there from as long ago as the 1700’s and as recently as the day we visited. It is a thing of beauty and soul. Someone asked me what I would like on my headstone. My …

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Economic Growth Outlook

The economy never ceases to be a topic of concern and debate. Essentially, there are two layers of discussion–the macro-economy that is what is fussed over in the national news with focus on the fiscal cliff, tax policy and the deficit, and the micro-economy, which I define as the economic circumstances we find ourselves in–our …

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The Power of Harnessing Hardship

Rags to riches stories are some of our favorites–from Cinderella to J. K. Rowling. We love to cheer for the underdog. While most of us have never been in “rags”, few of us have escaped hardship somewhere along the way. Even though none of us like to hear it, the challenges we face, if harnessed …

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Harness Hardship to Drive Growth

In the equestrian world, we have a saying, “There are two kinds of riders, those who have fallen off and those that haven’t—yet”. Until October of 2012 I went for many years in the latter category. Eventually, I joined the ranks of the former and when I did, it was a doozy. But that is …

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