Are You a Member of the 8% Club?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery year, I have good (no I mean great) intentions of achieving my goals for the ensuing year. I even print out my wheel of life (you can find this here) and take an inventory of where I am and where I need to invest some effort to improve my
Quit Like a Winner
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWe’ve all been taught that “quitters never win and winners never quit.” This time worn wisdom sounds great but may not be true according marketing guru Seth Godin who asserts that Winners do quit, and quitters do win. Life is about making choices because you can’t try everything. Godin advises that knowing
Getting Better at Getting Better – a/k/a Continuous Improvement
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe ever increasing degree of competition in the world means that, learning and development can never end. A recent article looks at how the meaning of high performance in the worlds of sports, the arts and finally business , and what it now takes to achieve it, has changed over the years. The
Jumpstart 2015: Try November Resolutions
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWe are less than two months away from New Year’s Day and the resolutions we’ll make (but probably not keep). If you want to escape this vicious cycle, try starting in November with a 30 day technique that will dramatically enhance your chances of success. But don’t take my word for it.
May the Strategic Forces (all five of them) Be With You
Reading Time: < 1 minuteMany companies are getting ready for their annual planning retreats and wondering how to create a winning strategy. If one person can be associated with the development of strategy as a discipline in the past thirty years it’s Michael Porter whose book “Competitive Strategy” is the final word on understanding
Four Reasons Your Strategic Plan Will Fail
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWe’re almost to the last quarter of the year and many organizations will begin their annual strategic planning ritual. Before you launch whatever strategy planning process you use, check out this short article in Forbes that offers some cautionary tales about the things that usually take the planning process off the
The Innovators: Knowing Where (and WHERE NOT to Play)
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe art of competition requires a sense of where , and where not, to play. In the music business, it turns out that knowing what to play is equally important. Case in point: Jethro Tull, one of the most successful and enduring rock and roll bands in the world led by frontman Ian Anderson for nearly
Scored Recently?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteFirst it was secretaries and receptionists, then it was caller ID, next it was voicemail. These are just a few of the obstacles which have kept us from connecting to decision makers whom we are convinced need our help; but for some strange reason think they have better things to
Was Gladwell Wrong?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteMalcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” posits that Bill Gates, the Beatles and other very successful persons attained that status by adhering to the “10,000 Hour Rule” of committing at least that much time to honing their skills. This brief but important article from the Smithsonian takes issue with Gladwell’s claim and holds that
A is for Attitude
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn this economic environment and observing what is going on in the world around us, we might question our own attitude these days. Can we continue to remain optimistic or is the environment chipping away at our very soul and belief system? Leaders are not immune to this milieu; we