In Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (Back Bay Books, 2002), he relates about the “stickiness” of Sesame Street. This stickiness applies equally to adults- especially when communicating in the B2B environment. How does someone “get” the memo? Read more

With every downturn in economic activity, there is a correlating upturn in required reporting. CEO's need to report more- and more often- to their boards. Consequently, senior executives are required to report more to the CEO- and so on down the line until we get to the field sales team. Typically if the numbers aren't looking good, the reporting really falls on the sales team to see where the revenues are and what the trend is. So lots of detail about opportunities, new markets, short-term, long-term, anyone that can give us an order now- is required in sales reporting. Since the job market is also thin, the sales team- motivated by fear- complies with the reporting.  Read more

Four questions about whether or not organizational change worked Read more

There is a lot of talk about “the lack of trust”- in corporations, Washington D.C., Wall Street, the media, and so on. Nobody can be trusted. But how can we reverse the trend of trust lost? How do we build trust?  Read more

Ever heard the term “that was a good meeting”? Just what does that mean? Everybody is happy? Everyone got to say something? There was a “aha!” moment? A new idea came out? But isn’t there that gut feeling that says “We’ve seen this and done this before, and nothing happened”?  Read more

Is your organization customer-driven, or driven from the top-down? Here are quotes from two business books, “In Search of Excellence” (Tom Peters, Robert Waterman, Harper-Row, 1982) and “Best Laid Plans” (Alan Weiss, Las Brisas, 1990) Read more

Sales 2.0. That’s the latest buzzword for sales management. It’s the next silver bullet. It’s going to solve all of our problems we have managing and directing a sales force. Or will it? Read more

 “Fake Work”, Brent D. Peterson, Gaylan W. Nielson; Simon Spotlight Entertainment (Simon and Schuster), 2009. Read more

It’s uncanny how large business organizations have the ability to beat employee excellence into compliant, blind, mind-numbing submission. It’s equally uncanny how organizations can reward mediocrity, poor performance, and bad behavior because they don’t want to confront the issue for fear of hurting the perpetrator’s feelings. Read more