Do you love to stay informed on the best thought leaders as well as find time to review the classic literature in your field? Successful individuals always answer yes to this question. The rub is finding the time do both while executing your life. Or worse yet, you read a  Zebras and Cheetahs  marketing and strategy book and wonder how you can get the big points across to your team who are also busy and less inclined to read a 202 page book. Well the authors of Zebras and Che

As a golfer with an inconsistent swing, I relate this common theme to hitting the sweet spot on the club. You know without ever having to look at the results. The sweet spot has a feel that is so obvious you know it immediately. The golf professionals demonstrate this by twirling their club or picking up their tee without looking up to see the end result. So what’s the sweet spot in, The Ultimate Question, You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader, The 15 Laws of Growth, and Give

The course offered through a community college failed to attract enough students to “make” its March schedule. Unlike businesses, schools offer products contingent on enough customers buying them in advance. As business person the course was my product. I do not like to offer a product under the terms of the school. Especially one as valuable as this course according to the participants. So I asked them to critique my marketing plan to make sure we never lacked for customers

Part of my job is to bring quality training to my local business market. For our tourist based market, the Disney Institute’s one day workshop on Quality Customer Service represents a workshop for virtually all the local business. Who wouldn’t benefit from a world renowned organization sharing their approach to quality customer service? To make sure everyone has access, a limit of 10 tickets per company was instituted and the price reduced to one-fourth Disney’s suggested ret

I recently was turned on to a 1984 video by W. Edwards Deming, the guru of Japanese quality and innovation. In the Five Deadly Diseases of Management, Deming correctly identifies the short term focus of management as well as the mobility of management as the reason for the decline inUS business, primarily manufacturing. He also mentions that Japanese businesses have both a long term focus and emphasis on learning the business as if it’s a family business. And that got me wond

Innovation is hot. Everywhere is another book, publication, blog or daily tweet on the need to innovate, how to innovate, why to innovate and/or lessons learned from the great innovators. According to N-Gram Viewer, a Google innovation, 118,000 books were published mentioning innovation in 2008, nearly double the 65,000 published in 1988. Studies by Forbes, Ernst & Young, and The Wharton School of Business suggest that up to 50% of the profit margins of the Fortune 100 come f

I love what I do and hope you do as well. Whether it’s coaching, teaching, facilitating, or consulting, the opportunity to help people deal with changes or uncertainty in their circumstances excites me. When an idea or thought brings clarity to the situation and the proverbial “light bulb” goes off, my joy is complete. Most of my group work is spent trying multiple approaches to get as many “light bulbs” to go off as possible. Swimming laps, which may seem monotonous to many,

Lately everything I read or see is related to the power of a story.  Dan Pink, who links motivation to achievement, wrote a blog about Story1. Don Miller wove the power of story into his book about making a movie about his life.2 My minister used a personal adoption story to bring home a sermon. The McKinsey Quarterly published an article this monnth on the power of storytelling. Since I am focused on facilitating learning, the story behind these messages has become clear. Ba

Can your employees individually relate their job to your mission statement? Do your consider knowledge critical to your success? Do you offer employees a career plan that includes learning or growing new skills? Will your product or service be leapfrogged by competitive technology advances? If your employees don’t have an answer to a problem, do they know what to do? If your answer to all these questions is absolutely, then you don’t need to read any further. If not, a CLO ma

Today Auburn is the #1 team in the BCS football poll. Two years ago they had a losing season; last year they started strong then faded in the second half. This year most analysts predicted they could go 9-3 at best and no one predicted they would have the best “team chemistry” in the SEC. A similar narrative unfolded for Alabama as well. Their three year rise from a losing season culminated with last year’s national championship. Of course, for Alabama, no one would have pred