“I have a very talented employee who I make exceptions for because they don’t always model our values. I don’t know if I could replace them. What should I do?” I have been in this situation numerous times and have had clients facing this dilemma as well. Have you ever been in this position as…
A business plan is essential in determining if a new venture is worth pursuing. It counts the costs of a decision and the returns or payback that will be realized. Is there a tool that works well for smaller business decisions that come up on a more frequent basis? Decisions like……. Should we hire someone? Can…
A helpful place to start in answering this question is to first answer another…..“who are you as a person?” As an example, for myself, I’m a Christ Follower, Husband, Dad, Grandfather, Entrepreneur, Leader, and Encourager. When I was 25, my answer to this question regarding my work was very different from when I was 45. If…
I asked the client about the potential his business had for growth over the next 3 years. The business owner and founder surprised me when he said…..“I think my business is going to double in size every year for the next 5 years, but, I’m not sure what my next steps should be.” Having significantly…
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….