It’s 8 am Monday morning and George is sitting across the desk from Sue, his CEO. After just six weeks on the job, George saw a way to streamline a process, to make work easier for people on his team, not to mention save the company time and money. He couldn’t wait to share his [...]
Ever watch an employee struggle and not know how to help them? Judy is the Chief Administrative Officer in a medical center. As is true with virtually every medical center, change is the new normal. So are seemingly unsolvable challenges. Recently, Judy promoted several individual contributors into management roles. They were each struggling, their direct [...]
The stories businesses tell affect their ability to succeed You’ve probably heard about the time JFK visited the NASA Space Center in 1962. While touring the facility, he stopped to greet a man who was sweeping the floors. Kennedy asked the man what he did there. The man replied, “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping put a [...]
George was sick of being number two, and a distant number two at that. His company had been chasing the leader in their industry since its inception. One day he got a call from his attorney saying there was an opportunity to grow by acquiring a promising new company. The price tag: $750,000 and 1% of [...]
Guest Blogger: Gary Wexler, Author of Sorry Millennials, We're Not Dead Yet: The Boomer Rebellion; Chief Evangelizer of Today's New Communication; Professor, USC Thirty-five years ago, Sharon Rich, then a young twenty-something walked into my ad agency for an interview as a budding young copywriter. I took one look at her portfolio and hired her on the spot. [...]
Last week, I Facilitated A Business Simulation With A Management Team On The East Coast. With 30 minutes remaining, the Chief Administrative Officer’s mobile rang with a small crisis and he stepped out of the room to address it, leaving his team to figure out what to do in his absence. They stopped playing. “What [...]
Picture this: you see an opportunity that could be quite profitable, but lies outside the comfort zone of your organization’s traditional style. Rather than bring this up and suggest a change, you forget about the opportunity and decide not to risk a bad idea. This is the old game keeping you from revitalizing yourself and [...]
[Guest Blogger: Noah Leventhal, Writer & Editor, ThinkBusinessGrowth] Back in my high school football days, I remember the emphasis put on practice. We never faced another team without hours of game footage and drilling formations until they were automatic. There was nothing to think about. Do it like you did a thousand times in practice. [...]
Last weekend, I facilitated a game-based learning experience at a graduate school of psychology. I was observing a group of students who were afraid they didn't have enough resources to win. One woman requested coaching, the others reluctantly agreed. I asked them a few questions that resulted in the awareness that they had more available than they knew. For [...]
The leadership team in a manufacturing company had a problem. Their global organization had them communicating across cultures, hierarchies and time zones. The result: breakdowns. To help them grasp the complexity of long-distance communication, I divided them into pairs with matching sets of building blocks. Their job was to sit back-to-back and create two identical [...]
