Organizations achieve dominance by introducing unique ways of doing business

that the market perceives as adding value. A timely innovation often changes the rules of the game.  But success can be a precursor to failure.  Many innovators find themselves wedded to ideology that blinds them to changing market conditions or competitors making inroads...

Much of what experienced marketing and sales managers know about their

trade is no longer producing—buyers are less accessible.  Spending more on traditional advertizing or adding sales boots on the ground could be a losing proposition. The title of a new book by Mike Lieberman and Eric Keils captures the essence this shift—Fire Your Sales Force...

Businesses that survived our prolonged recession deserve respect—but

To prosper in recovery, CEOs may have to shake off “hunker down” behaviors that helped them survive.  Success will depend on a company’s capacity to quickly, assess, decide, initiate, and eliminate.  Futurist David Houle calls this era the “shift-age”. He suggests that the ground will continue to move under our feet. Only...

Can people really change? Kurt Lewin sure thought so. Anyone who has ever

heard or used words like ‘feedback’ or ‘action research’ or ‘group dynamics’ or ‘self-managed work teams’ or ‘force field,’ has been impacted by Kurt Lewin. Known today as ‘the grandfather of applied behavioral science,’ Lewin, a Polish-born, Berlin-educated...

Management science and technology have combined to produce a “mega change

” in stereo.  Adaptations of digital technology allow us to:  create, transmit, compute, store, and retrieve data in ways that have marginalized time and distance as barriers to entry.  This revolution has catapulted us into Marshall McLuhan’s global village.  We are...

Following the Civil War in America (1861-1965), industrialization went

rampant. Large factories started dotting the landscape where farms had stood before. Machines, the exciting new technology, were promising to make business owners wealthier than ever—if only they could ‘get those lazy and greedy front line workers to use those machines to their...

Entrepreneurs typically run into trouble after they get their new venture

launched.  The character traits and behavioral patterns required to focus an idea and bring it to market have nothing in common with what it takes to transform embryonic enterprise into sustainable business. As a coach to the CEOs of fortune companies, my first objective was...

Since 1900, many psychologists have contributed to the process of managing

  SigmundFreud (1856-1939), was one of the first to postulate the existence of an inner world, something he called ‘the  unconscious’, that drives what human beings do-something we hold today as obvious as gravity. He is considered the creator of ‘psycho-analysis’ and his concepts of Superego, Ego and Id led almost directly...

Non linear thinking has been a lifelong compulsion beyond my capacity (

Mid-career graduate studies in the applied behavioral sciences taught me to appreciate and more effectively work with disciplined thinkers.  Paradoxical thinking—as opposed to selling or defending personal positions from either end of the vision:production continuum, helps holistic and linear thinkers meld their gifts and achieve synergistic...

By any measure, “The Hunger Games” is a smash hit, breaking records

The movie defies categorization:  Survivor + Gladiator + 1984 + Coal Miner’s Daughter with a PG-13 rating.  There is more going on here than just a mash up of unlikely genres.  Like one of Katniss Everdeen’s high tech arrows, this story strikes at the heart of the millennial’s cherished values.  Here are just a few of the ways “Hunger Games...