Category: Critical Thinking

Reading Time: < 1 minute The founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad passed away on January 31. His extraordinary success (he was number 10 on the world’s richest persons list) by bringing a new business model to an old category is the stuff of business legends. What was so different about his offering? Vistage’s premier speaker

Reading Time: < 1 minute We think of Steve Jobs as a great creative entrepreneur whose feel for the market and insights into design created great products that people stand in line for. He was also very persuasive and a great communicator.  If you’d like a few tips on one particular aspect of his abilities,

Reading Time: < 1 minute The politically charged world we live in is characterized by many terms, most notably “freedom, fairness and equality”. Maybe the tone and temper of civic discourse would be improved if we had some shared definitions of them. Blogger Seth Godin offers three short but compelling views of what they mean. How do

Reading Time: < 1 minute Most of us realize that thanks to science, and perhaps more importantly, scientific method, that we enjoy a level of technology and therefore comfort that the kings and queens of a century ago would have envied.  Maybe we should apply the scientific method to how we run our businesses. Specifically,

Reading Time: < 1 minute “Follow Your Passion”….. “Do What You Love”….. “Build It and They Will Come.”   These phrases have practically become big laws of career wisdom; but do they really lead to success?   Many would-be entrepreneurs have found that starting businesses by following their passion results in no one following them. Ultimately, passion

Reading Time: < 1 minute The two most eagerly awaited events every spring are the opening of baseball season and Mary Meeker’s, (aka Queen of the Internet,) annual Internet Trends presentation.  As the lead internet analyst at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers,  millions of business people rely on her analysis and predictions. Whether

Reading Time: < 1 minute Professional sports team employ full time talent scouts.  Do you?    You may not need to go as far as the sports team do in this regard, but with the economy at near full employment, all the low hanging fruit has moved further up the tree. Wouldn’t you be well served

Reading Time: < 1 minute Every CEO should remember the proverb that “every silver lining has a cloud.”  The business translation of this adage was best put by Vistage Speaker Pat Murray who has warned thousands of Vistage members that the “second worst thing that can happened to a company is success.” In that spirit,

Reading Time: < 1 minute Being a C-Level Executive means having a point of view about the future.  Many executives limit their thinking about the future to the initial impact of a particular change but don’t think about what happens after that. Business (and life) is often like a row of dominoes:  we push one

Reading Time: < 1 minute Quality isn’t everything.  Case in point: Domino’s Pizza.  Founder Tom Monaghan discovered that the key to success in the pizza business wasn’t great pizza, but free delivery.    But no competitive advantage lasts forever and the company’s subpar pizza began to deliver subpar results, no matter how fast it’s delivered, especially