Business is the flow of energy
In a meeting yesterday I was explaining to the VP of Product Development of a $200 million locally headquarted business the underlying concept of the Quantum Leaders’ model of the 21st century business. And it dawned on me that I don’t often share the underlying precept - business is all about the flow of energy.
Let’s [...]
Why do companies wait
Ever wonder why companies wait for a crisis to take action they should be taking all along. A headline in today’s NACD Directors Daily reads “Anheuser-Busch announces cost savings to boost value in face of InBev bid”. and goeas on to say “the New York Times /AP (6/28, C4, Andersen) reported that on [...]
The Business Case as a Management Tool
Business cases & plans seem to have a bad reputation these days, particularly in the start-up/early-stage venues.
Why is this the case?
It appears that the aversion to business plans is the highly suspect nature of the financial business cases, particularly as they relate to sales revenue projections on the 2+ year horizon. Such skepticism may be [...]
Marketing ROI?….Picking Up The Gauntlet
In his last post on The Challenge of Investing in People, Norm likened the current skepticism of many business leaders re “people investment” to that of the view of marketing 20+ years ago. He went on to state:
And still today no one has yet come up with a way of tying marketing dollars into actual [...]
The Challenge of Investing in People
Have you ever heard a board member, or perhaps even a CEO say, “The Company sure invests a lot in trainings, meetings, and “feel good” stuff, and I wonder if more of those resources and energy went into focus on results whether we would be better off?” When we ask the CEO to focus on [...]
The evolution of the organization – Part 3
The third phase began to emerge in the literature around the late 80s and early 90s and is now becoming more recognized in the life of corporations. I have called this stage the Spiritual stage, not because of its relationship to religion or any specific spiritual path, but because it has all the elements found [...]
Leadership: The Philosopher’s Stone of Innovation…? (Part 2)
The other end of the spectrum re strategic decision-making is where it is totally driven by the leadership of the company. This is very often the case with start-up, early-stage and founder-run, privately held firms. The potential advantages are somewhat obvious: strategy is driven by a focused vision, factors which may not be effectively quantifiable [...]
The evolution of the organizations – Part 2
The second major stage of organization model started to emerge around the middle of the 20th century. It was heralded by the work of the humanist psychologist like Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and applied to organization life by people like McGregor and Herzberg.
This movement, if one wants to call it that, added another component to [...]
The evolution of organizations – Part 1
Organizations have gone through two major evolutionary transitions over the last 100 years. The first was the foundation of the modern organization around the turn of the 20th century.
This was the time of Henry Ford and the mass production. It saw the emergence of Frederick Taylor and the scientific method of management. It viewed the [...]
Improving Your Company’s Velocity - Practice, Practice, Practice
Not only is it a way to get to Carnegie Hall, but focused, repeated practice of your firm’s best business processes is one of the ways to improve your overall velocity. In sports, it’s called establishing “muscle memory” by the repeated execution of a golf or tennis swing (for example), first working on the [...]
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