Chief Executive magazine recently summarized some reasons why Chief Executives make mistakes. Some of these are well-known to most of us ... predetermining the outcome before a thorough deliberation, praying for synergies when they don't exist, failing to take account...
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Cheating? Who, me?
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, is an insightful guy who recently performed some studies regarding cheating. (You'll need to scroll down to the 3rd article.) What he found suggests that some predisposition toward cheating may come from events that...
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Who cares? You should!
Patrick Lencioni has got it right in his guest column in Business Week recently: There's no substitute for taking an active interest in the lives of your employees. The MBWO - "managment by walking around" theory has always been popular...
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No substitute for Leadership Team
I mentioned here before about the regular Sunday NY Times feature called the Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO's about leadership, lessons learned, interviewing techniques, etc. Here are 4 key lessons. Build your Leadership Team Sunday's column interviewed...
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Vol. 49-Sinful Excess – Greed, Gluttony, Lust
The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which covers the North Bay area of San Francisco - from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and...
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Say no to conventional wisdom
There's no better time to re-examine our assumptions about what works and what doesn't. How many times have we seen the power of unconventional thinking (quit using the tired "out of the box" thinking metaphor) ... and how frequently have...
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More Accountabilty for Directors?
Gretchen Morgenson, a NY Times columnist, reports that shareholders are speaking out more than ever as they seek to hold directors accountable. It's a welcome trend, as we know that too many directors are really just cronies of the owners...
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More tax? More government? NO!
Thomas Friedman's Op-Ed in the Sunday NY Times entitled Real Men Tax Gas, makes sense in many ways, mostly in arguing that we have not proven to be very "tough" in making the difficult decisions. At the same time, Friedman...
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Innovative Financing Alternatives
Whenever I find an article about innovative or alternative financing, it's worth sharing. Creative financing has never been more needed as businesses seek to preserve and protect their franchise. While these alternatives may not be applicable to your business, use...
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Million Dollar Ideas
Forbes Magazine recently ran an intriguing article about eight different, million-dollar businesses they discovered, each with a special niche. I love these articles because they highlight the different ways we can be successful and usually offer some unique insights from...
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Communicate with your employees – Always!
I have frequently cited the weekly Corner Office series that appears in the Sunday NY Times. This week's interview is with Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. In his interview, he emphasizes the critical importance of communicating regularly with employees....
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Why Planning is critical – and why you don’t do it!
The need for planning is a common theme at Exkalibur and John Maxwell, a well-recognized source of leadership insights, has written extensively on this subject. He recently wrote about Principle-Centered Planning as a way to emphasize the value of planning,...
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Time to Toughen Up!
One of the common issues I face in working with CEO's and other business leaders is the resistance we all have to making tough decisions. Usually, they're decisions that we have already made but haven't been willing to execute. They're...
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Begin planning for 2010
The McKinsey Quarterly, a publication of McKinsey & Company, recently published a short article offering Three Tips for planning in these uncertain times. It emphasizes the importance of developing multiple scenarios, rigorous monitoring and longer-term focus to enhance the success...
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Ford CEO on Being a CEO
Thoughtful readers of this blog will see that Alan Mullaly's interview in the NY Times Corner Office column sounds like it's taken directly from work published by A.G. Lafley, former CEO of P&G, and Peter Drucker, on The Role of...
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Multitasking? Not so much!
Researchers at Stanford University unveiled a study last week that found that multitaskers aren't so great when it comes to accomplishments or focus.Interestingly, the study started out as a search to find the "holy grail" of multitasking, i.e., what DNA...
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Get the right people on the bus … and let them fail?
The NY Times runs a regular feature on Sundays entitled The Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO's on the topic of Leadership.There is a consistent theme relating to hiring philosophy, feedback experiences and other "lessons learned" in this...
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The need for unbiased feedback
There is no question that the value of unbiased feedback is critical to our success. The first cousin to Accountability, unbiased feedback is rarely a welcome interloper but one that we appreciate as we consider how we might improve the...
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Congratulations to Mary’s Pizza Shack
Congratulations to Vince Albano, CEO and member of the CEO Round Table, and his entire family and team. They have just been awarded Business of the Year by the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce.Vince was elected as CEO in June...
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Gaps in your Leadership Team?
I have written and spoken extensively on the topic of building leadership teams and how those gaps hang like an albatross around the neck of the CEO ... or any leader of an incomplete team. The President of the United...
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Employee Engagement – A Call to Arms
There is increasing interest in the subject of employee engagement these days as more businesses realize the value of highly focused and committed employees. Business Week recently published an article touting the value of a highly engaged workforce, which emphasizes...
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Win in a tough economy
You've heard much of it here before ... Take Action, Plan Carefully ... so take a minute to reinforce that mantra by reading a short article from the Harvard Business web site from Jeff Stibel, brain scientist and entrepreneur.As we...
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Incentives Rule!
In his fascinating book, Freakonomics, Steven Levitt remarked that "Incentives are the cornerstone of life" ... yet so many companies don't pay more than cursory attention to them, and invariably, only with respect to the most mundane, traditional sales compensation...
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Small Business Loan Program? small ….
Small-business owners applauded when the Small Business Administration unveiled a lending program in May. But ... no surprise here ... the program is off to a slow start. With $255 million, the program is prepared to make about 10,000 loans...
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Small Business? small in the u.s.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research organization in Washington, recently published a study looking at the rates of small business employment around the world. The finding: “By every measure of small-business employment, the United States has...
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Forecasting: Less Fun than Usual
CFO Magazine recently included an article entitled "Imperfect Futures", describing the growing challenge of forecasting in an uncertain economy. It's never been easy but maybe never before, this hard. There is a valuable perspective in this article worth considering. (more…)
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Sales Declines continue to plague Small Business
Disappointing sales are the number-one problem afflicting America's small businesses, and few business owners expect consumers to start spending again any time soon, according to the National Federation of Independent Business's latest monthly survey of its membership. As we know,...
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