Management is failing to educate workers on the workings and benefits

Example: “if employees were to save $50,000.00 per year by correcting a recurring shipping problem, the saving would go directly to the bottom line.  If their company was retaining 10% of its total revenue (after expenses), that $ 50, 000.00 contribution represents $500,000 that does not have to be sold.  In a tight economy how many jobs might...

What’s your end game?  Business owners seldom have an answer to that

question—they usually lament about being too busy to even consider possibilities.  It’s an undeniable fact that your game will end.  Will you sell the business…turn it over to the next generation…or perform a daily grind until you die—leaving your family and the government...

Our economy is no longer in recession  but recovery is painfully slow

.  The good news is that you survived—and no doubt,  you learned from the experience.  Wisdom comes from experience, and meaningful experience usually comes from making mistakes.  Life in the post-industrial era (what futurist David Houle calls the shift-age) is moving so...

Innovative technologies and new management processes come and go, but

the principles of effective leadership have remained constant throughout the ages. That’s because they are founded on timeless truths regarding what goes on within and between people. Management science however continues to deliver a never ending stream of time saving and quality...

Many organizations have decades of planning and operation advances woven

into the fabric of everyday life.  Enhancements such as just-in-time inventory management, total quality processes, lean manufacturing, and a plethora of continuous improvement mutations, served us well—until for the first time in history, we were broadsided by a  “mega...

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...

At times, even the best run companies face critical situations at times

.  Having coached over twenty CEOs through recession, I’ve been up close and personal with both winners and losers.   There are lessons to be learned.Winners reinvent themselves faster than their competition. Ahead of the curve, they perpetually cull marginally performing;...

CEOs face many watershed moments when the value of an established partner

, major account, product, supplier, bank, or employee is questionable.  IN my 35 years of coaching the CEOs of large and midsize businesses, I have witnessed a recurring and consistently costly hesitation to sever unproductive relationships—even when metrics and gut feelings...

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...

The shift-age (labeled such by futurist David Houle) is transforming our

lives and radically changing the way business will be done.  Like a large number of our ancestors who experienced and end to the “age of extraction”—where people made a  living by farming, fishing, logging, hunting, and trapping, many individuals and companies have not...