Articles
Are You a Growth Master?
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 …
Why Strategic Plans Fail to Drive Growth
Almost every growth-minded company has a strategic plan. Unfortunately, the vast majority of strategic plans I see are lists of projects that don’t comprise a strategy. Worse, they place heavy demand on resources while potentially creating new operational systems or solutions within functional areas, which may not work seamlessly with the new direction of another department. Together, this can add work, undermine results and cause companies to spend lots of money with little to show for it.
The odds that strategic planning will improve your company’s growth performance are pretty dismal. Consider these statistics:
Three Silver Bullets That Transform Your Company’s Performance
What is the number one challenge of business leaders worldwide? Time. We have more challenges than we have bandwidth. There are only so many hours in a day and even with all of our mobile and digital aids, we can’t get to everything we would like to—whether they are problems or opportunities. As a result, many leaders want a silver bullet—the one shot wonder that solves everything. Life and business isn’t quite that easy, BUT…here are three silver bullets that can transform the performance of your company.
Secret to Growth Success: The customer is always right
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.
3 Key Areas to Assess Your Business
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 …
The ROI of Thinking
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 …
How to Make Effective Decisions
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 …
Reignite: Need Your Help
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 …
Blind Side: You Have One—Where Is It?
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, …