Several years ago, I read an article with this title on how much cash the best-run public corporations had as a % of their annual revenue. Unsurprisingly, after setting aside financial institutions, the companies with the most cash were all tech companies, with some carrying close to 50% of their annual revenue in cash. Current…
What do you do when you can’t see the way out of the challenges you are facing? Why not take a shower! I’ve had some of my best thoughts, the answers to some of my greatest challenges, while I’ve been in the shower. Based on discussions with many others, I’m not the only person who’s…
Pricing sets the profitability table for a corporation. If it is not done correctly, no amount of cost cutting will be able to make things right. It was obvious that my client had a profitability issue, more specifically, a Gross Margin issue. They were pricing to compete on cost, and they were a high-value solution…
Fact……..Collective Genius brings us farther, faster, and higher than our Individual Genius. We are so much stronger as a team when we can harness everyone’s brain power…..the “Collective Genius” of the entire organization. Collective Genius is not about agreeing with each other but about finding ways to constructively disagree. It is about intentionally seeking input from team…
I was leading a team of professionals developing a new solution for my client and had one engineer who seemed to argue about anything that wasn’t his idea, even though many of the ideas were being requested by the client. After many frustrating interactions and team meetings, something had to change. He seemed to feel…
OK……this may be a bit of an overstatement. A better way of saying this may be that I love what happens to relationships and organizations when conflict is exposed. Let me explain. When I was younger, I tended to avoid conflict. If a conflict arose, I would try to avoid it or gloss it over….
Jim Collins, in his iconic business book “Good to Great”, discusses getting the right people on the bus and in the correct seats. That’s all well and good but, before we do this, can we afford to add new employees right now? The answer to this question resides within another question. What is the business…