Business Negotiations: Your Win-Win Strategy
Ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including the outcome expectations, the perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons with with others, and the overall negotiation experience itself…
Educating the Next Generation of Leaders
To survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, you need leadership skills and organizational capabilities different from those in the past and there is a growing recognition that leadership development should not be restricted to the few who are in or close to the C-suite. With the proliferation of collaborative problem-solving platforms and digital “adhocracies” that emphasize individual initiative, employees across the board are increasingly expected to make consequential decisions that align with corporate strategy and culture. It’s important, therefore, that they be equipped with the relevant technical, relational, and communication skills…
Your Target Audience is NOT Everyone
If you approached a dozen business owners and asked who their target audience included, at least one would say, “Everyone.” Some brands are so convinced of their value in the marketplace that they have a hard time seeing who couldn’t benefit from their offerings. In an era of targeted marketing, brands understand that they need to gear their efforts to appeal to specific audiences–they just believe they can address multiple target audiences simultaneously. But mass targeting rarely pans out the way it’s intended…
Data protection Law Enforcement: The Day After
Consumers have long wondered just what Google and Facebook know about them, and who else can access their personal data. But internet giants have little incentive to give straight answers; On May 25, however, the power balance will shift towards consumers, thanks to a European privacy law that restricts how personal data is collected and handled. The rule, called General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, focuses on ensuring that users know, understand, and consent to the data collected about them. Under GDPR, pages of fine print won’t suffice. Neither will forcing users to click yes in order to sign up…
Creating Genuine Customer Value
Marketing sage Philip Kotler once said, “Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. Marketing is the art of creating genuine customer value. It is the art of helping your customer become better off.” While Kotler wrote this in 1967, it’s still a pretty revolutionary idea. Most marketers don’t see it this way…
Is ‘Customer Experience’ The New Marketing?
This shift really hit me while visiting one of our customer service centers. Instead of just seeing banks of agents on phones, I noticed a group of about 10 people huddled together. Curious, I approached and saw they were responding to customer comments on social media. Then I noticed someone else working at a desk nearby, writing a blog on the same topic. Ultimately, they planned to link the social media response to the blog. Then it hit me. That’s not service, that’s marketing! Where customers go for e-commerce…
Ten Reasons Good Employees Get Fired
Every company, government agency and not-for-profit is an organism, and they all function the way any organism does. When the organism is healthy, good things happen. When the organism is unhealthy, nothing good happens. Movement is slow and sluggish. You can tell when a company culture goes bad — because culture is the loudest thing happening in any workplace…
Masks OFF: The Pitfalls of A Culture of Dishonesty
If suspicion of laziness, dishonesty or unfairness is allowed to breed, others will take their cue from it and the standard is set. And yet, if businesses can foster a positive culture and make ‘outsiders’ of those who don’t live the values, it can generate a powerful, progressive reaction in others. Worth remembering…
How To Negotiate with A Liar
Is there anything you can do to ensure you’re not duped in a negotiation? Yes, if you focus on prevention rather than detection. There are several science-backed strategies that can help you conduct conversations in a way that makes it more difficult for your counterpart to lie. Though these methods aren’t fail-safe, they will leave you better positioned in your deal making and help you create maximum value…
How a Disconnected Corporate Culture Cost United Airlines $800 Million Overnight
If you don’t proactively shape your corporate culture, it can morph into something that does your business more harm than good. Corporate culture impacts your bottom line. Fact. If you were ever skeptical about this truth in the past, look at what’s been unfolding with United Airlines as your proof. The company lost $800 million in value almost overnight…
How to Say No When It Really Counts
“The most important thing is to anticipate a corrupt situation,” Mosquera says. Countries, companies, and clients vary. Learn the integrity practices of your setting. Then, use standardized methods — such as having transactions reviewed by others or never going to a meeting alone — to discourage inappropriate offers and requests. Even as a small company or an individual, you can develop a policy that explains your position on transparency, ethics, or values…
Growth in a Time of Disruption
First, the problems in advanced countries – from slow economic growth to political uncertainty – are likely to persist, reducing potential growth everywhere for an extended period. In this context countries must not succumb to the temptation to try to boost demand through unsustainable means, such as…
Why Does Strategy Implementation So Often Fail?
There’s a natural tendency for the immediate and detailed (the budget) to take precedence over the longer-term and broader-brush (the strategy). So you need to take positive steps to protect the strategy…
10 Traits Of Great Business Leaders
Whether you’re a freelancer, small-business owner, or full-timer, to climb the ladder, you must know how to lead the pack. Are you destined to be the big boss or be bossed around…
Offer your business an edge: Analyze the competition
Doing a competitive analysis is not only an essential step in starting a business, it’s also valuable at many points in a company’s growth …
How To Create A Leadership Development Program That Actually Works
If you want to develop your company’s next best leaders, first put your money where your mouth is …
Assume Capability, Not Intent
Have you ever sat in a meeting and watched the people around the table and started writing your own narrative about them? “He doesn’t care,” you say about one person. “She has an agenda she’s trying to push,” you smugly say to yourself about another. And then there is the inevitable, “He’s lazy and doesn’t want to get the job done.” What’s the common denominator of such narratives? They are all judgment based and blindly come to conclusions about the intent of each individual…
Contemplating Change? Plan for the Human Side
Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics: scale (the change affects all or most of the organization), magnitude (it involves significant alterations of the status quo), duration (it lasts for months, if not years), and strategic importance. Yet companies will reap the rewards only when change occurs at the level of the individual employee. Many senior executives know this and worry about it…
Always Take Business Personally
Take a moment and think about the people you’ve encountered whom you consider inspired, energized, and successful. They probably take work personally. And the flip side is that the people who have depersonalized their work are probably not the people you have enjoyed working with. Your own experience thus indicates that success seems to be linked to taking your work personally. It seems clear to me that if we are to fulfill our responsibilities and obligations as executives — and our potential as leaders — we need to take things deeply personally. Now, of course there is a big, big difference between taking it personally and not being able to manage…
Internal Marketing: Delivering Value To The Customer
Internal marketing is here again: It first appeared as a concept a few years ago and in synopsis it’s the theory that customers’ attitudes toward a company are based on their entire experience with that organization, and not just with the products. Thus everyone who has any contact directly or indirectly with the customer helps to shape that customer’s experience. Therefore, customer satisfaction is deeply dependent on the performance of …
Why Micromanaging Kills Corporate Culture
This so often happens in organizations: Micromanagement (or picomanagement, if micro doesn’t quite describe it) kills ownership. And when employees don’t have ownership—skin in the game—everything starts to go to hell. This is one reason many organizations are considered to be dysfunctional — everything is someone else’s responsibility…
‘Short-Termism’: The Long Term Threat To Growth
The evidence that short-termism might be harmful continues to pile up. A recent paper by Stanford University’s Shai Bernstein, finds that when companies go public and face pressure for quick results from investors, their best inventors tend to leave, and the ones who remain produce fewer…
When your process fails: Good process+bad people=crappy outcome
When a great process is run by great people, it sometimes feels as if there is no process. People have the freedom to change the rules because they feel empowered and accepted. They know their team trust them, they believe in the business and they are happy. Creativity flows naturally. Although there is a tacit understanding that some level of structure is necessary to ensure the growth of the business, the structure is never allowed to stop the growth itself…
Are Confident People More Productive?
Richard Petty, a psychology professor at Ohio State University has spent decades studying confidence. He defines confidence as this: the stuff that turns thoughts into action. Why? Because confidence first turns our thoughts into judgements about what we are capable of, and then transforms those judgements into actions. Action is confidence’s essential ingredient because confidence is achievement-oriented…
The Price of Core Values is...$80
I have been advising boards and senior management for many years, and have experienced pretty complex situations, but this was a situation I was not expecting, nor prepared for. In no time I was in discussion with him, not about the price (which I was ultimately prepared to pay), but about the fairness of what I have unintentionally agreed upon. …
This Script Can Stop A Micromanaging Boss
Dealing with a micromanager can be demoralizing. It’s hard to be confident and motivated when your boss is so obsessed with control that they hover over your every move. But typically, the boss’s micromanaging behavior has less to do with your actual performance and much more to do with their own anxiety…
The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture
We wear our unpaid, uncompensated overtime as a badge of honor. We sleep less, brag about our caffeine intake, and are available for calls and emails 18 hours per day. We measure our importance by how many half hour slots during the day are double or triple booked, and we perversely consider it honorable to do this for free …
Challenging Mediocity: Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Leadership exists to disrupt mediocrity. However many in positions of leadership tend to protect the status quo (mediocrity’s best friend) at all costs. The best path forward for any organization is…
5 Principles for Dealing With Constant Change
Build competencies for adaptability into your company or risk losing your way in an ever-fluid marketplace …
Are You Lying to Yourself About Your Leadership?
We all try to think well of ourselves, but there are lies we can tell ourselves that do harm to ourselves. Maybe we fear being vulnerable, but we end up insulating ourselves from truths we need, and the cost is high. Do you recognize yourself in any of these untruths? If so, it may be time to have a heart-to-heart talk with yourself …
Great Business Relationships Are Key to Small-Business Success
I don’t care if you’re the smartest small-business owner on the planet, with the best products or services, and cutting-edge technology. I don’t even care if you’ve got a foolproof business model. Want your small business to succeed? You need people skills …
The best employers in the U.S. say their greatest tool is culture
Leaders of the 100 Best Companies to Work For know the secret to business success isn’t just about earnings, but about creating an ideal culture for their employees …