First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on March 28, 2018. While on the surface, a customer-first culture seems like the most obvious way to drive business growth, it usually backfires. Most of these initiatives result in employees feeling like their ideas and feedback are not valued, even if their ideas and feedback are directly from the customers they work with every day. To […]
First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on February 7, 2018. At a recent conference, I was honored to have people in the audience tell me that I was “disrupting” the consulting industry. Disrupt used to be a bad word that made it sound like things were unstable, but in today’s society, we try to disrupt the norms to be more innovative and make […]
First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on January 2, 2018. When you look at the trends for organic business growth, it all comes down to employee engagement and customer experience. While practically every business has pledged to work on these areas over the past 10 years, the difference in 2018 is that people are actually putting serious money behind it. In fact, in […]
As we launch into a new year, you are likely setting both personal and business goals. Many find that their lofty goals wane by the end of January so here are a few tips to ensure you make progress towards the goals you set. Create small successes People often set goals in January to lose 20 pounds or grow business by 20%, but these goals will […]
First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on December 5, 2017. When a company is considering a merger or acquisition, its leaders conduct an abundance of research on the other company’s customer base and how it does business, and they perform rigorous legal and financial due diligence. What is almost always forgotten — and is the biggest risk once you’ve committed to the investment […]
First published on Forbes, Nov. 9, 2017. Co-founders are the norm in startups, but as they grow, one person often stays CEO, while the other assumes another title. If you had asked me a year ago if I’d encourage a co-CEO relationship, I would have said, “Absolutely not! That sounds like a nightmare for role clarity, responsibility and ego battles, not to mention the confusion […]
First published on Forbes, Sept. 26, 2017. Since August, two gigantic forces have dominated the news: Harvey and Irma. Every time we turn on our television, radio, or scroll through our favorite social media site, there they are. For those of us not directly impacted by the hurricanes, going to the office seems to bring a sense of normalcy, yet we still have an underlying […]
First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on September 5, 2017. An airplane seatmate recently told me that a major division of a Fortune 500 company held an all-hands meeting for its sales staff to announce the goal of growing its business by 20%. Sounds like a big goal, right? In the same meeting, it was announced that bonuses would be eliminated. What? Salespeople are […]
We know it’s important to take the time to explore new ways to innovate and grow our businesses, but who has the time to stop and do that? It often seems impossible to shoehorn one more task into your never-ending to-do list. However, it becomes a danger and liability to your organization to let too much time lapse between considering innovation strategies. The first way […]
First appeared as a Forbes Coaches Council article on August 3, 2017. It’s believed that Albert Einstein called the definition of insanity “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This idea should heighten the urgency for every business leader to be more innovative as a means to prevent insanity, keep yourself relevant and outperform your competitors. How can you optimize innovation for your organization? […]