If you’re an entrepreneur, your “strategic plan” is crystal clear……. pursue the vision for your product or service far enough so that you can pay your current bills and fund future growth. It’s that simple. The focus must be on surviving before we can focus on thriving. A client of mine said “This talk about strategic…
Improving Efficiency or implementing Continuous Improvement may seem like a “hard” skill vs. a “soft” skill, but it’s not. It all comes down to the organizational culture you’ve built and where you plan to be in the future. I had a client say “I have equipment in my building that can run much more efficiently than it…
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…
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…
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…
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…