Renewable Fuel for a Brilliant Life
Two days ago I heard part of a taped interview on the radio. The last sentence stood out, as almost no other I have encountered, as a recipe for fulfilling one’s potential.
Renewable Fuel for a Brilliant Life
Two days ago I heard part of a taped interview on the radio. The last sentence stood out, as almost no other I have encountered, as a recipe for fulfilling one’s potential.
How to Manage Women: Tips #2 and 3
Tune Your Performance Assessment Meter As the evolved leader you are, I am sure that when you assess performance you try to use an …
How to Manage Women Tip # 1
This post is not about why you should focus on how to manage women better. OK, maybe just one sentence on that: Whether you are …
Compassionate Capitalism
Economic policy affects our business and private life daily. But most people avoid thinking about it. Many bigger picture economic theories can seem impractical, …
Stop That Focus Group!
The only thing worse than not having an understanding of customer needs is having an incorrect understanding of customer needs. If you think that …
To really change people’s behavior: Use the right word.
You are only leading if they are following — i.e., acting on your ideas. Here is a surprising and extremely simple way to dramatically …
Is This the Coolest Company Ever?
Splurge on promoting immense real impact by one of the coolest companies I have encountered. I had the honor of serving as a business …
Hewlett Packard
The nth self-inflicted injury (Autonomy) flings Hewlett-Packard into recovery mode once again. I feel pained each time one of these poor decisions comes to light …
Five Change Management Key Success Factors
Who is NOT trying to make change happen faster? Managers want employees to take up the banner of [fill in the blank: More Innovation? …
Got Demoted? It’s an Opportunity
A youngish friend, let’s call him Matt, got a great job with an exciting and inspirational start up right out of college. He was …
Is Business Good or Evil?
You have to read this article: “The Wrath of Putin”. (By Masha Gessen, Vanity Fair, April 2012. Link to online version below) It …
Fast Company on Big Ideas
In the November issue of Fast Company you’ll find “Why, with so many businesses thinking small, the World Needs Big Ideas”. I love big …
Best Simple Operational Plan– Part 2
The fun does not stop once the strategy summary is distributed and the initiatives list is complete! Here is the second and last section …
Best Simple Operational Planning –Just 4 Slides
QZBJGG9HWXMN Everyone has a reason to hate operational planning. It takes too long. Worse, it takes all that time to do and is often forgotten. …
Getting Great Customer Feedback on a New Technology
You’ve got very cool new technology that thousands of labs will love. The product is ready. Rev up the Introduction Machine and sell, right? …
What is Capitalism? The answer is changing.
I attended the TEDx Presidio, where the real question that speakers illuminated was: What is capitalism becoming? The theme was Reinventing Capitalism. I have …
Design a Great Presentation
Recently Duarte Communications generously instructed an elite set of social entrepreneurs* on how to design and deliver a truly great presentation. And on the …
Saving Customers Time Will Build Your Business
The humor newspaper The Onion ran this front page headline: “Things Taking Entirely Too Long”. The accompanying photo showed a man staring at a …
Winning Big Through Sustainability
In the business world, “Sustainability” started out as Lunatic Fringe talk, then moved up to window-dressing for Corporate Responsibility sections of Annual Reports and …
Social Ventures for a Better World
This is an invitation to be inspired and perhaps help change the world. Are you familiar with Social Entrepreneurship? Here is a glimpse into …
Your Marketing Needs Four Pillars Too
Most tech businesses have product marketing. Sometimes Marketing starts and stops there. If you build it they will come, right? Or, as one manager …
Speed Up Your Sales Improvement Time
Sales are below plan. Does the blame game begin, or do both Marketing and Sales know what to do NOW to make a difference? …
Defusing Difficult Conversations
Second post in the “Thanks A Million” series on great things that I have learned from employees or colleagues. I was on the Board …
How and Why to Optimize Your Relate:Create Ratio
Can you think of anyone who succeeds by focusing exclusively on the subject matter of his/her work? Yes, some artists who labor alone do …
What if you met people’s deepest need: Recognition?
by Dean M. Herman, Ph.D. http://www.hermanconsulting.com/ Have you ever noticed how hard your colleagues work just to be recognized? Think of how much effort …
Is Your Plan Bold Enough to be Safe?
Careers and companies rise and fall based on being right about how much innovation to take on at any given time. Reach too far …
The 60 Second Pitch that Will Get you 2-3 Minutes of Attention: Maybe more!
People decide in 30-60 seconds whether they will pay the slightest bit of attention to you. If you slay that dragon, and they decide …
How to Spark Innovative Thinking
A process for innovative thinking sounds like an oxymoron, I know: It veers dangerously close to Dilbert territory. But it is risky to …
Ask This at the Outset of Any Initiative
Preparing to launch an initiative? Avoid common and costly errors by asking one question at the outset: Process Task or Talent Task? This is …
What Can Philosophy Contribute to Management?
The management toolset is full of processes, metrics, and strategies, but rarely contains philosophy tools. Philosophy and business are usually thought to be quite separate. …
How (and Why) to Describe “Potential”
Who advances in the business world often depends on management’s assessment of people’s “potential”. But what constitutes potential is often not clearly described. As …
Why Would It Make Sense to Generate the Same Lead Over and Over?
A product marketing manager asked me if we were just wasting money and time on lead generation: The sales force had just informed him …
What Can the Design World Contribute to Management?
I recently saw a terrific documentary, “Objectified“, by Gary Huswit which is all about how things are designed and how design affects us. (Available …
This Could Become Your Favorite Rule to Live By
If you had to choose two key rules to live by and a classic movie star to have on a desert island with you, …
Thanks A Million, Kumar!
Hopefully you have gotten a surprise gift at some point. How about one that you didn’t recognize as a gift? Mine came wrapped like …
The Mother of All Metrics
I nominate Achievement of Projected Sales Ramp Rate (Time to Ramp – “TTR”) as the single most important metric for your business. To get …
Marketing is Sales, Sales is Marketing
Previously clear lines between Marketing and Sales are gone: Instead there is now a Marketing-Sales Continuum. The technology, sociology and economics of B-to-B Marketing …
Artists & Activists
Use The Force, Luke
Businesses and the people in them share a tension: They want to succeed and feel woefully short of the time and money to do …
AffectiveAction 