Driving into Las Vegas to catch our return flight was shock therapy to get my head out of vistas and back toward the “real” world. If billboards are today’s indicators of cultural values, Las Vegas sure isn’t Moab, Utah. Moab is adventure and Vegas is money. And that contrast got me thinking about what I learned in my hikes and time away from my business. Several ideas were re-enforced. Consultants are always looking for games, activities, and non-business examples to drive h

KPI taught me a lesson I still apply today. The less you understand about a problem the more information you request. The more you know about your problem, the more you focus on a few key items. KPI’s. At Victoria Station restaurant headquarters, reams of prints outs became meals per labor hour and yields on prime ribs for example. We had others but it definitely gave us a pulse to manage our 30% growth rate. Today KPI’s are referred to as metrics. Every plan is now filled wi

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Having lived in California is the 70’s and 80’s I found his covering of the events fascinating and accurate. A great read for those interesting in understanding how Apple is now the most valuable business entity in the world today. Proud for our local hero, new CEO Tim Cook. I also read Seth Godin’s latest, We Are All Weird on the ride home from the beach and that is blog in itself. Jobs took me 8 hours to read a

Why is something that is so obvious so hard to grasp sometimes? When I mentioned casually to group of friends watching a golf tournament that I do business coaching, one remark came back, “Coaching, who needs it.” What struck me was not the attitude, but the irony that all of us were watching people play a game we all could play only they were playing for a decade’s salary every 4 days. And every one of them wouldn’t be in the game without his/her coach. In fact, look around

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

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

After reading the June 2010 Success Magazine on Innovation, I’ve been thinking about innovation and how it relates to people, productivity and profitability. Not only have I been thinking about it all wrong, I realize that most companies do also. Most of us think of innovation in terms of big ideas, products, and processes. Rarely do organizations connect innovation to people first and foremost. That’s a mistake for several reasons. Let me illustrate my premise. Business cycl