Just about anyone can be successful when the waters are calm and steady. It’s when the sea gets choppy and the waves come in that the true test begins. Everyone else might be drinking the Bad News Bears Kool-Aid, which seems to always be popular on the 6 pm news, and many of them will just …
We’ve known for a long time that periods of stress in the American economy accelerate change in a way that’s sometimes generational. Think about the Great Depression and the resulting economic protectionism. Or the women World War II brought into the workforce. Those were really good things that came out of exceptionally tough times. It’s …
I spent some time recently with a couple of long-term customers. Both have national presence, but one is small and the other large. Each is successful in its own way, with the smaller company’s strategy relying a fair amount upon the corporate culture and its boots on the ground, and the larger historically using a …
Several years ago, I wrote a post about Van Halen’s contract with their promoters. They have a clause in their agreements stating that the band should always be provided with M&Ms backstage, and none should be brown. The devil is in the details. At first glance, this may seem a bit eccentric, but if you think about it, the “no …
In any kind of buy and sell, the customer experience is the differentiator. It’s where repeat business is earned or lost. This sounds simple, but we all know it’s hard to execute. In four decades of construction, I’ve yet to see a project that was delivered without any problems. Some are small, some large, but …
Like many organizations, we meet once a week to get a status report on our current projects, discuss any management changes needed and, most importantly, find out how we might help one another. No silos. As we have grown, I felt a need for another type of meeting, involving more people in the company, to …
No matter what business, it’s the small things that differentiate. I think this concept can be hard for some to understand. Doing a good job with the technical side or the deliverables is a prerequisite for sales, and if one does not have these, it’s a nonstarter. But when it comes to customers forming an …
We are finally entering spring, and the weather seems to be a bit better. The market is in good shape and has been for a while. Perhaps your basketball team is still in the hunt. Sometimes it’s easy to think we are in balance and all is good with the world. But “balance” is by …
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a dinner where Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon spoke on privacy issues related to the web and how “big data” is changing things for the better…and worse. Since the Internet and social media came along, it seems we share more personal information than ever before. There are plenty …
Several years ago, I spent 10 days on Ireland’s famed Connemara Trail, traveling from Galway to Cliftonover on horseback. We traveled pastures, road beds and a few swamps and galloped on abandoned, grass-laden railroad beds. Along the trail, I learned a valuable lesson which I thought I knew, but it was evident I did not: …
Each year, I send notes to a fair amount of folks I have never met but have read about, and many times I am asked, “Why would you send a letter to someone you do not even know?” The simple reason is because I care. I care about meeting new people who have been successful, or …
It seems like we all spend a lot of hours with our noses to the grindstone. That sometimes means we get more done, and at others, at least to me, sometimes I cannot see the forest through the trees. When I’m wrestling with a complex problem, or anything similar for that matter, the solution almost never comes …