Have You Disarmed Your Customers? Chip Bell recently wrote "Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About It." In it he describes just how lethal poor customer service can be in a digital age.
Updated Fri May 27, 2011
The Financial Meltdown Was the Result of Too Little Risk Excessive risk-taking has been the whipping boy for the financial meltdown over the last 3 years. On the surface I get it--executives at many financial institutions took on irresponsible amounts of leverage and got burned. However, something about this concept of these people being excessive risk-takers never made sense to me.
Updated Mon Mar 7, 2011
Just Talk to Each Other--Frequently and Directly I spent a day last week discussing some difficult issues with a leadership team I'm a part of--issues we probably should have discussed a while ago, but hadn't. As the day progressed it became clear that we had been avoiding quite a few conversations over the last year.
Updated Tue Feb 22, 2011
It's Not Only How You Play the Game--It's Whether You Win or Lose The old expression "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" is flat out wrong. Winning matters. It matters because you achieve something important. But it matters for a much bigger reason also: It drives growth.
Updated Mon Feb 7, 2011
Sustainable Innovation = A Culture of Smart Risk-Taking One of the most pressing topics on executives' minds these days is innovation. Everyone is trying to figure out how to identify and commercialize the next big thing.
Updated Fri Feb 4, 2011
Are You Laying the Groundwork for Mediocrity? Recently I started working with a technology firm who 5 years ago was at the top of their game, but is now struggling. They got beaten up in the market and haven't been able to regain their footing. To their credit, they realize that market forces aren't the only thing that has led to their trouble. As one VP put it, "I think we started to lose touch with each other and clients a number of years ago. Internally we had competing agendas and externally we weren't innovating. The net effect has been a growing mediocrity."
Wed Jun 9, 2010
The Real Culprit of the Financial Crisis This week on Capitol Hill, Congress was grilling Kerry Killinger, former Wamu CEO, about what he knew regarding the toxic loans that brought down the 119 year old savings & loan which he’d run for 18 years. As you might imagine, the bulk of his testimony amounted to the Ollie North defense – it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t know that much – blah, blah, blah. (I really don’t know what they expect to learn from these guys when they have the threat of criminal charges looming over their heads).
Wed Apr 14, 2010
Don't Leave Your Organization Uninspired This week, a prospective client, the CEO of a small bank, remarked that morale felt low at his company. He cited a list of external reasons as to why that was the case. They were actually good reasons, but ultimately they were out of his control. "Given the rather unfortunate hand you're holding, what's next?" I asked him. "What's your vision for the future?" He handed me a sheet of paper with the company's vision on it. I couldn't believe it.
Sun Jan 24, 2010
Get hell-bent on making it work As I filed some articles from 2009 this weekend I re-read the story of Space-X and its CEO Elon Musk and found it particularly inspiring. One of his quotes kept ringing in my ears, "Optimism, pessimism, f
Wed Jan 13, 2010
Perfectionism is the Enemy of Creation The title above is a quote from John Updike and I've never known it to be more true. I've spent the last few months researching and writing my second book and have found the process to be challenging. Writing a book is never easy so I didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, but I did expect it to move with more speed than it has. After all, I've been speaking and consulting on this topic for years. But pangs of self-doubt have been creeping in. What if I'm not saying anything truly new? What if I don't bring the material to life? What if it's not compelling?
Tue Jan 5, 2010
Leading Ideas: A Game of Inches "Life's a game of inches - and the inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second..."
Posted Mon Feb 23, 2009
Leading Ideas: Aim for More Than Success At a recent dinner with a long standing client he reflected on the pride he felt for what his team had been able to achieve over the last year. Under his stewardship they had realized a market leading position in a very competitive niche. Never wanting to miss an opportunity to glean wisdom from success, I asked him what he felt drove their strong performance. I loved his answer. He said, "I've come to realize that success doesn't inspire people. Doing something meaningful does. The two are so closely related that people get them mixed up. We didn't create something successful here.
Posted Mon Feb 9, 2009
Leading Ideas: Great Thinking Always Starts Half-Baked Over the years, I've run a program with clients called Seeds of the Future. It's a one day brainstorming/presencing process designed to identify the "signals" that people are seeing on the horizon, but not necessarily discussing in a structured way. One of the things that makes the process successful is that ideas don't need to be fully baked in order to bring them up for discussion. And once on the table, participants can only build on an idea, not tear it down.
Posted Wed Jan 7, 2009
Leading Ideas: Show Up and Deliver Your Best Everyday In a recent conversation with a client, she mentioned that she and her team were in a "wait-and-see" mindset as it pertained to budgets and projects for next year. Given the current market, I could understand where she was coming from. However, I sensed a certain lethargy that I knew would put them in a bad spot in the months and year to come if not addressed. As I probed deeper, it became clear that the current environment had zapped their energy.
Posted Mon Dec 8, 2008
Leading Ideas: Embrace Uncertainty A few weeks ago, a client, the President of a financial services firm, shared that he was struggling with the feeling of paralysis at his company. "It's as if, in this tough economic environment, the team's got a built-in excuse for poor results," he said, "So they throw their creative thinking out the window - just when we need it most. I understand it's tough, but we've got to change the energy around here." Last week, we held a half-day meeting to begin to re-engage the executive team's creative thinking.
Posted Tue Dec 2, 2008
Leading Ideas: Reopen Your Heart
Browsing through some photographs at a street fair this weekend I came across a simple image of a field and a forest. For a moment, I was transported there. It looked like a place I used to play as a kid. A sense of freedom came over me. I wanted to stay there. As I walked away, the quote below by Camus came to mind. I was left with a deep appreciation of the power of art to reconnect us to the beauty that's buried in our hearts and minds.
Posted Thu Aug 21, 2008
Leading Ideas: Get Honest With Youself Recently, I worked with a client who was having a tough time managing a complex set of projects. He was sharp at the technical aspects of his job, but in over his head as a leader. He knew it, it was also apparent to others, but he had a difficult time admitting it. As a result, he had very little access to the knowledge and wisdom he needed to get past it. He couldn't actively seek help for something he couldn't acknowledge - moreover no one really wanted to help (or could help) a guy who didn't want it.
Posted Wed Jul 30, 2008
Leading Ideas: Tear Down Fences
"If you put fences around people, you get sheep."
— William L. McKnight, (1887-1978) Former 3M CEO
Consider This:
Posted Thu Mar 20, 2008
