Five Things Managers Don’t Do That Undermine Excellence in the Workplace
Want to eliminate excellence in your organization? Then make sure to not do these five things.
Holly Green
organization
Pre-thinking Your Way to a More Flexible Organization
What would you do if your best customer closed the account and went to your biggest competitor? (And no, jumping off a cliff is not an option!) Seriously, what would happen if your key suppliers suddenly tripled their prices? How would you respond if a new technology made your current business model obsolete overnight? What…
Redefining Excellence for Today’s World
Thirty years ago, Tom Peters published an incredibly influential business book, In Search of Excellence. In it, he defined eight characteristics of excellent companies: a bias for action, staying close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, clear and compelling organizational values, focusing on what you do best, operating with a lean staff,…
Are You a Tourist or Resortist?
Whether on a billboard or inside your organization, language matters. Find out why the words you use can help make the difference between winning and settling for second best.
Are You Bold?
Are you brave, valiant, valorous, audacious, and swashbuckling? Or are you timorous, trepid, faint-hearted, and pusillanimous? Find out how to be bold as you “go for the gold.â€
Are Your Employees Getting Happy Feet?
Here’s some interesting news. According to the Department of Labor, unemployment fell for a fourth month in a row. The current rate of 8.5% represents its lowest point at any time in the past three years. Leading indicators also show that the economy continues to grow. Granted, it isn’t creating jobs as quickly as we…
The Winning Attitude Tipping Point
As business leaders, everything we do should focus on setting our organizations up to win. But we can’t do it all ourselves. Which means we also need to get our employees obsessive and relentless about winning – a task much easier said than done. If you’re struggling to build a winning attitude in your organization,…
Play to Win!
Did you catch the New Orleans Saints/Detroit Lions game last Saturday? What an exciting game between two high-powered offenses! And once again, the sports world offered a powerful lesson for business leaders. Specifically, I’m referring to Saints coach Sean Payton and how he approaches the game of football. Now there’s a coach who plays to…
Are You Focused on Winning in 2012?
A new year is all about possibilities, promise and potential, and sometimes a lot of other stuff gets in the way. Are you ready to win in 2012?
Phases of Innovation
When I ask business leaders to identify which part of the innovation process their organizations struggle with the most, I typically get one of three answers: We have a lot of ideas but most of them get judged as impossible or too hard to implement based on changing the way things currently are We have…
Avoiding the Dreaded Decision Fatigue
Have you ever made an important business decision late in the day, only to look back on it a day or two later and wonder, “What was I thinking?” It turns out the problem may not have been so much what you were thinking as when. A recent New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=willpower&st=cse, relates the…
Not enough hours in your day? Start making better choices.
Feeling a little pressed for time these days? (Who isn’t!) It turns out you have more time than you think. In fact, that’s the title of a great book new book by journalist Laura Vanderkam — “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.” (168 = the number of hours in a week.) According…
