Your best employees are contemplating quitting. Some of them already have – even though they are still on the job. Hiring is picking up – especially for the stars who more than compensate for their cost with superior performance. Your best employees will have the opportunity to leave. Are you vulnerable for an exodus? Chances are the answer is yes if you are guilty of any of the following:
Jay Goltz writes a blog on small business and entrepreneurship for the New York Times. His March 10, 2014 posting was titled “10 Words Entrepreneurs Should Use With Caution.” In that piece, Goltz shared 10 [...]
Leaders distinguish themselves in times of great risk and great reward. Whether it is the political leader who bolsters our confidence in times of crisis or the business leader who follows her instincts to seize an opportunity, we respect and admire the leader who is out front when the stakes are high.
Most of the talk about New Year’s Resolutions is just that – talk. Despite all of our good intentions, most of us won’t achieve our goals for the year. Research released by the University of Scranton Psychology Department reports that only 8 percent of Americans are regularly successful in achieving their resolution. 49 percent achieve occasional success, and 24 percent are never successful. So in other words, the odds are stacked against you even if you set a goal for the New Year
Every change is evaluated against the result AND the damage inflicted during its implementation. Ignore the people side of the change (feelings and perceptions), and it is only a matter of time before the desired results suffer, too. The type of change needed in today’s successful organizations is continuous. It is generated from every level, and it requires engagement and commitment from those involved. You can mandate compliance. Commitment and engagement to make change work are volunteered when you focus on more than the end result.
Delivering customer service – at least the way it is practiced in most companies – is easy. The customer asks you for something, and you give it to them. Building a culture that is obsessed with serving customers is hard. Carl Sewell’s family of auto dealerships is at or near the top for sales and service with the brands they represent for one simple reason: They are the best at sustaining a culture that serves customers.
Don’t worry about the sale. Just take care of the customer. Give the customer the best customer service you can deliver, even if the customer isn’t buying, and eventually the sale will come.
Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken, consultants at McKinsey & Company, suggest that 80 percent of what leaders care about and talk about when trying to enlist support for change does not matter to 80 percent of the workforce. To gain the commitment for the change that you want, you must connect with people where they are. You do that by making the change relevant and real.
Another blog post about change? Really? The last three I posted aren't enough? How about the thousands of other books, blogs, and articles on the subject? I am with you. I don’t need to hear another message that changes are coming and I need to get on board. And yet, we are confronted with this reality: Most of our efforts to make change work don’t work as well as we had hoped … or even at all.
“When will things get back to normal?” That question has been asked countless times since the economic meltdown of 2008. Most people want to know when the job market will bounce back; the economy will return to something close to sustained growth; uncertainty will subside; or the rate of change will slow to a more manageable pace. But, what if this is it? What if instability, rapid change, and uncertainty are the new normal? And, what if I’m wrong and things bounce back quickly? If you can succeed now, you will crush it then.
Your long-term success will quite possibly come down to a simple question: Are you a dodo bird or a coyote? Learn if you have what it takes to thrive in a world of constant change.
The old-fashioned view of mentoring is someone outside a learner’s chain of command who equips that learner with new skills and knowledge. It is an archaic expert to novice or smart to unwise philosophy. The goal is the transfer of information or expertise, much like pouring knowledge into the head of a passive learner. It is the model that antiquated teachers used to teach facts students only recalled long enough to score favorably on the test.
You own your logo and marketing message. Your customers own your brand relevance in the marketplace. And when your customers say you are irrelevant, no amount of advertising, positive press, or sales promotions will convince them otherwise. Two iconic American brands are proving that every day.
In its “Economic Prospects for the Year 2000,” the writers at Business Week saw a glass half-empty and chose to see it as mostly full. The world painted in its 1989 article would have been a great place. The vision that they created was completely possible. We missed the opportunity. We lacked the rigor in our thinking and failed to consider all the possible implications of our choices. We lacked the discipline to execute toward the vision. And, we lacked the courage to confront reality and put long-term success ahead of short-term reward.
Fred 2.0: New Ideas on How to Keep Delivering Extraordinary Results is loaded with practical examples and compelling stories of how individuals, companies, and entire communities have decided to distinguish themselves through service to others.