Speaking of Leadership^® Blog

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 “Look Out Above”: Getting nervous about the economy and market?   Brian Wesbury isn’t and thinks both have a ways to go.  He says “Look out above” in his recent four minute Wesbury 101 video  “Trumponomics and Stocks.” Look Out Below: Stocks may continue to head up, but according to Alex

Reading Time: < 1 minute Remember the movie “Tommy Boy” and how he strove to save the family auto parts business?  One writer thinks that there is significant business wisdom in this movie.  Check out these five important sales lessons from “Tommy Boy.”

Reading Time: < 1 minute When hiring salespeople, and others for that matter, we often insist on experience from the same industry we happen to be in.  We hope that such a background will reduce ramp up time, and in the case of salespeople,  that they will be bringing a good prospect list as well. 

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 The baseball season is here!  Not everyone agrees with George Will’s take on politics and other aspects of American life,  but most baseball fans regardless of their political stripe would acknowledge that few students of the game are more passionate or informed about the sport than the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist

Reading Time: < 1 minute “Technological advancement is greatly overestimated in the short run and greatly underestimated in the long run,” remarked science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.  The Director of Industry Strategy for Adobe shares  “6 Tectonic Shifts in Tech Every Executive Should Know” based on research at the World Economic Forum.  You have probably

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

Reading Time: < 1 minute The most important person we ever manage is ourselves.   To the extent that “habits are the magistrates of our lives,” taking a hard look at what gets in our way of adopting  good ones and shedding bad ones seems a good prescription.  This article from Forbes enumerates Eight Habits that

Reading Time: < 1 minute A Strange and Powerful Truth:  Alan and Brian Beaulieu of ITR Economics in a short but important blog entry dispel some nonsense about declining American incomes…and issue a warning about the consequences for CEOs of rising ones.  Find out what they have to say about Managing Your Labor Costs. Take