Holly Green
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…
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,…
FastCompany recently released its list of the world’s 50 most innovative companies. Many of the names on the list come as no surprise, especially the top three (Apple, Facebook, and Google). But what caught my attention was the diversity of companies and industries represented. Technology and Internet companies dominate the list (again, no surprise). But…
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…
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€
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,…
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…
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?
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…
Do you think email, Twitter, and Facebook are workplace annoyances? When it comes to blocking innovation, they’re not nearly as destructive as your own internal distractions.
What do the worlds of fashion and safety goggles have in common? More than you might think!
Bias is defined as “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.” In the business world, this definition also applies to concepts and ideas. As business leaders we like to think we’re impartial, open-minded and objective in regards to new ideas,…
