competition

Your Phone is Now Your Bank: Are You Ready for Disruptive Innovation?

Does your bank fit inside your cell phone? If not, it soon will. And if today’s banks don’t come to terms with this fact very soon (as in starting yesterday), they may no longer exist in 10 or even five years. How’s that for disruptive innovation? I just finished reading Bank 3.0 —Why Banking Is…

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Take the Innovation Self-Test

Ever wonder why some companies seem to effortlessly come out with one great innovation after another while others struggle to get even one new product or service out the door? There’s a reason for it. Innovation is a complex process that involves a lot more than just throwing money at an R&D department and hoping…

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Anti-innovation: 10 Proven Ways Not to Innovate

Success in business is a wonderful thing. But it’s also a double-edged sword. As companies experience success, their emphasis tends to shift to protecting and maintaining the status quo versus considering new opportunities and products. Unfortunately, clinging to what has worked in the past puts the brakes on innovation. It also puts you out of…

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Guest Blog: The Interview Process

The interview stage of the job application process is, understandably, crucial. Whilst a good CV will get you noticed, and a good covering letter will let you get your foot in the door, it all amounts to nothing if you’re unprepared for the interview process. There are certain things you can do to prepare for…

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Too Busy to Keep Up? Develop Resilience.

Resilient (riˆzilyÉnt): able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed; able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Wow. Talk about the perfect description for leading an organization in the current business environment! Today’s business leaders need an increasingly diverse and sophisticated array of skills, traits, and aptitudes….

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Five Leadership Strategies That Can Make or Break Your Business in 2011

What’s in store for business leaders in 2011? As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a year of promise and opportunity. And I see new challenges that require different ways of thinking and leading organizations. It’s not just that opportunities, threats, and changes in the marketplace happen faster and with less predictability than…

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Are You Ready for the Pendulum Swing?

Without question, the past recession has hit many companies hard. But as business leaders struggling to keep our companies afloat, we sometimes forget that it’s been hard on employees as well, including those who managed to keep their jobs. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by Kelton Research, today’s employees are feeling under-empowered,…

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More Medicine for Your Complexity Complex

It seems like I touched a nerve with my two recent blogs on complexity. The feedback I’ve received from clients and business associates reinforces my belief that managing complexity represents one of today’s most compelling leadership issues. With that in mind, here are some more strategies for keeping your organization ahead of the complexity curve:…

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Are You Running Red Lights in Your Business?

Running a red light in order to save a few precious seconds is one of the dumbest, most irrational things people do. Yet we do it all the time, in business and in real life. The other day, while driving home from a long session with a client, the light in front of me suddenly…

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What We Can Learn from the NFL Draft

I have a confession to make – I love the NFL draft! I don’t sit in front of a TV for three days, hanging on every pick. But I like the suspense of wondering who will get selected first. I enjoy seeing the differences between what the experts predict and who the teams actually draft….

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Social Media: The New Competitive Advantage

To Twitter or not to Twitter, that is the question. Obviously, Shakespeare didn’t write it quite like that. But if he lived in today’s world, he might have. And more important, if he ran a business or had P&L responsibility for a product line, the answer to his question would be an unqualified yes! Most…

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Employee Engagement: Creating It and Keeping It

Our current recession is good for one thing. Many companies are focusing on “employee engagement,” an approach to more consciously value and act on connecting with passionate employees who truly care about the company. With businesses failing at a record rate, who doesn’t want to convince nervous workers to remain calm and hang on through…

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