Get Customers. Get to Know Them

Jul 31, 2012 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

I recently received a thank you note from Matt, one of my nephews. I had helped him revise his resume and practice for interviews, as he needed to "get" a co-op in his final semester of college in order to graduate. Matt wrote that he had "gotten" a great co-op position with a company that has strong future employment opportunities for him as well. Our work in getting to know the prospective organizations had paid off. He was selected while other students with higher grade point...

Leadership Development and Succession Planning: They’re Not Just HR’s Responsibility

Jul 24, 2012 | Leadership Development

We're making headway, but many executive managers in the public and private sectors still believe the human resources department is primarily responsible for leadership development and succession planning. It's a shame to say it, but those organizations are going to face a long, hard road ahead. The longer executive management continues this limited mindset, the further behind their organizations will be in developing their future leaders and their organizations' succession plans. You see,...

Good Managers Are Not Necessarily Good Leaders

Jul 17, 2012 | Leadership Development, WBS

I was speaking with a client recently about his company's heir-apparent: his son. He wants his son to take over as the company "leader" in a few years. His son is very organized. He runs a solid department, manages his staff well, satisfies customers 90+% of the time, and manages his project and department budgets well. However, he's lost when it comes to thinking long-term, studying the industry and competition, identifying new opportunities to pursue or ponder, or in developing the company -...

Is It Time to Clean House and Simplify Your Business?

Jul 10, 2012 | Leadership Development

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers” – Gen Colin Powell My husband and I are finishing two construction projects. In the process, we've been digging through boxes we've had in storage to determine which items will work in the new facilities and which won't. In addition to comments of, "Why did we save this?" and "Huh, I'd forgotten we even had this," I've noticed we're asking ourselves things such as: How will this fit in and help us achieve the look and feel we're trying to...