Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix unknowingly posed an important business process question in 1967 as the title to a song and his debut album. An earlier article, “If It’s Not a Process, It’s a Problem,” discussed the importance of processes. This article will discuss how we go about developing good processes. Any good process begins [...]
Playing Defense or Offense Are you playing defense when you should be playing offense? Our brains are wired to survive. That means we instinctively protect rather than risk. As an entrepreneur, you have chosen to take on risk. That’s great, but in your day to day actions are you sometimes protecting when you should be [...]
Confront the Brutal Facts Charlie Munger: “I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it; indeed, especially when one doesn’t like it.” Jim Collins in "Good To Great" has a chapter titled "Confront The Brutal Facts." Our CEO peer group recently read and discussed this chapter. Their concept is simple but [...]
Surprise...But Don't Be Surprised. Surprise your customers by exceeding their expectations. Surprise your employees with something thoughtful and appreciative. Surprise your competitors with a disruptive product/service offering. And when something unexpected happens...observe carefully and orient yourself to the new situation.
Our CEO peer group is reading the business classic "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. Here is one of the greatest pieces of advice I have found in the book: "When you know you need to make a people change, act. The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a [...]
If It's Not a Process, It's a Problem All the activity in our businesses can be classified as either a process or a problem. If you have an activity that is not a process and you don’t think it is a problem, just wait. I promise it will eventually become a problem. For purposes of [...]
There Is a Secret to Profitability in The Online Age and You Probably Already Know It On a recent shopping trip (an infrequent event for me) to Downtown Summerlin for dress slacks I visited Macy’s and Dillard’s. My perception prior to the trip was that these two retailers were very similar. Indeed, in terms of [...]
"We're Talking About Practice, Man" Performance: Knowledge and Practice Alan Iverson famously downplayed practice because he considered himself a game day player. He had immense skill but even at his level there was room for performance improvement. As CEOs and business owners we devote our energies to improving our organizations’ performance. There are a multitude [...]
The Importance of Acting Quickly on People Changes Our CEO peer group is reading the business classic Good to Great by Jim Collins. Here is one of the greatest pieces of advice I have found in the book: When you know you need to make a people change, act. The moment you feel the need [...]
Putting Together the Pieces of the Performance Puzzle: Skill and Will In an earlier article (click here) I talked about the importance of practice to develop skills. There is another dimension to performance in addition to skill and knowledge…WILL. Max Landsberg presented the Skill/Will Matrix in his book The Tao of Coaching. In a future article I will discuss [...]
