Sir Ken Robinson is an expert on education. learning, and creativity. He tells a story about once having served on a panel of speakers that included the Dalai Lama. During a Q&A session, the Dalai Lama was asked a question that he didn’t answer right away. After a long silence, the Dalai Lama finally responded,
“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?'”
We all talk about outstanding customer service, and many of us even claim to deliver it, but do we really? Too much of what we call customer service is really an attempt to mollify a customer after we’ve screwed up in some way . . . a restaurant may give a customer a free dessert
“Change is good; you go first.”
Jim Hemerling is an author and a senior partner/managing director at the famed Boston Consulting Group. One of his particular areas of expertise is change management, so he must be a very busy guy these days because there’s a lot of change to manage. Change is coming at us rapidly, and it’s accelerating. He recently
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
The Loyola Ramblers were the “Cinderella” team of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament. True, they didn’t win the championship, but for a team that many thought couldn’t win their Missouri Valley Conference, making it all the way to the Final Four was an incredible feat. On the surface, it may seem that there aren’t any
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.
Entrepreneurs often have a tough time delegating effectively. After all, the company is their baby. They gave it life and steered it through its formative years. They know how to press all the important buttons and pull all the essential levers better than anyone else. But if they continue to refuse access to those buttons
“The majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.”
“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.” ~ Thomas Sowell “Has anyone ever said, ‘I wish I could go to more meetings today?’” ~ Matt Mullenweg “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith I was going to say that meetings get a bad rap,
“Compensation is an equity issue. People want to know that they are being compensated fairly . . . “
The Overture Group is an executive search firm with an additional specialty in compensation consulting. We recently heard a presentation by Bob Lindeman and Mark Reilly, both managing directors of that firm. They reminded us that compensation is (or should be) a strategic issue, not a simple, tactical, what-are-we-gonna-pay-this-person issue. And our strategy should consider
“Prioritizing causes us to do things that are, at the least, uncomfortable and sometimes downright painful.”
Setting priorities. That’s something many entrepreneurs struggle with. In fact, entrepreneurs are sometimes likened to crows who get distracted by every new shiny thing that comes along. Unfortunately, this creates confusion as employees try to keep up with ever-shifting priorities. In other cases, instead of setting priorities vertically with the most important at the top
“A key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team.”
Almost everything that gets done in business gets done by teams. Even the road warrior sales person who is out there, far from the office and hunting his next prey, needs the support of a sales team. Keynote speaker and best-selling business author, Patrick Lencioni, talks extensively about teams in his book, “The Ideal Team
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ~ Peter Drucker
We have used this space to talk about leadership many times in the past, and no doubt, will continue to talk about it in the future. It is, after all, a critically important topic. If you go to the business section of a bookstore or a library, you’ll find the shelves are packed with books
