No One is Shooting at You
Years ago, I was having coffee with an entrepreneur who, at the time, was bootstrapping a software business. He had been a CIA operative during the Vietnam War, and told me about the time he had spent with a multinational special forces unit in Laos.
Increase Your Attrition
Many companies are struggling to find the qualified people they need, so they resort to retaining the people they have whether qualified or not. They fight to eliminate or at least reduce rates of attrition when it is increased attrition that can do the business the most good. Retention of the best is all that […]
Forget Recruiting. Poach.
Don’t recruit. Poach. In a tight labor market, there is no percentage in tentativeness. If there is any time to go on the offense, it is now. I don’t know why recruiting firms call what they do a “search.” Who cares about a search? A search is easy, and often consists of little more than […]
The Zeal of the Convert
You cannot rush buy-in, and that’s OK, because while buy-in is nice to have, professionalism is all you need. A vice president of sales told me matter-of-factly that I was wasting her time and mine when we met. Her CEO had just hired me to help improve the capability of her division, consisting of more […]
Retain Just the Best
You want to retain just the best in your organization. Why? Retention, per se, is no business objective. It is retaining the best that counts, even in the tightest of labor markets.
Your Own Worst Enemy
Businesses can be their own worst enemies when business process supplants business thinking. The CEO of a large industrial American company in Japan told me of difficulties he faces in buying from a division of a large Japanese industrial company, not because of a lack of will to sell on their part, but rather unnecessary and […]
[:en]The Post-Distributor Age[:ja]卸業者のいらない時代[:]
[:en]We are living in a post-distributor age. Gone are the days of cajoling distributors in representing your products to customers—often poorly. The best businesses of today make it easy, comfortable, and fast for customers to buy actually what the want and how they want it. A friend of mine in Australia told me how he […]
[:en]Dramatic Strategic Change Manifesto[:ja]劇的な戦略的変革において知っておくべきこと[:]
[:en]CEOs often ask me how best to lead dramatic, strategic change knowing full well the kind of concerns, resistance, and doubt that such change can evoke in some staff. Below I list some of what advise.
[:en]Return on Human Intelligence[:ja]人間の能力から得られるもの[:]
[:en]Artificial intelligence and expert systems in business can increase organizational capability, but at the same time, despite hype and promise, they are no silver bullet and can also dumb your organization down.
How to Improve without Change
I once cured my lifelong phobia of spiders by moving to Australia. When I stepped off the plane in Sydney, my phobia was instantly transformed into a rational fear! I improved my condition without having to change anything about myself. As absurd as that sounds, you would be surprised how often people ask me how […]
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