Want To Hire Innovators? Here’s How You’re Dismissing Them
To hire for culture-fit is to hire for comfort, the short-term, sameness; to keep optimizing what is rather than creating what’s next. The problem with hiring for culture-fit is…
How Tech Tools Can Grow Customer Loyalty
If talk really is cheap, then can the act of listening pave the path to untold riches? It’s quite possible—at least from a corporation’s perspective, according to a recent survey…
Achieving IT Agility: 4 Steps To Start Your Journey
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Gartner’s 10 Tech Predictions That Will Change IT
During its recent Symposium ITXpo, Gartner released predictions about the future of technology for IT departments and users. Here’s a look at those predictions and what they might mean for…
BI Self-Service Analytics: IT’s Next Top Priority
IT organizations should prioritize their self-service analytics tools projects to enable business users to experience the value of analytics and big data investments. (Click image for larger view and slideshow.)…
What the American Farm Can Teach Business Leaders About ‘Sowing’ Success
Images and activities revolving around the American family farm are a staple of the autumn season: happy families going apple picking; kids getting “lost” in haystack mazes; harvest dinners, with bountiful feasts. Beautiful photos…
Why Salespeople Should be Advocates and Not Thought Leaders
What exactly is a thought leader anyway? Aside from a trendy buzzword infiltrating all areas of business, it is someone who is considered an informed opinion leader and go-to expert…
8 Ways Customer Service Affects Your Business’s Bottom Line
“Treat them mean, keep them keen” couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to customer service and customer loyalty. High-quality customer service is essential to a growing or established company’s bottom…
How to Quickly Grow Your Network With No Business Experience
Everyone knows that networking is important, but fewer people know exactly how to build a network, even though networking is perhaps the business owner’s single most important skill, no matter…
5 Reasons the Best Performers Underestimate Their Value
A few days ago, a highly-placed executive at a large Bay Area company mentioned to me that he got laughed at when he set his consulting rate for his first…
The 6 Essential Components of Effective Sales Letters
The following excerpt is from Craig Simpson’s The Advertising Solution. Think of the following six points as a kind of “Sales Letter Writing 101.” These are the six components that legendary…
21 Ways to Market Your Business Online
Our nascent fascination with search stems back to the internet’s earliest days when algorithms didn’t reign supreme. Back then, it was far simpler to be found on the web. It…
7 Mistakes You Must Avoid to Make a Great First Impression
According to research cited in the Harvard Business Review, it takes less than 150 milliseconds for someone to form a first impression. Human nature is such that we process verbal…
Lessons from Four Great American Innovators
In 1912 a young scientist from New York, Clarence Birdseye departed on a fur-trading expedition to Labrador in Canada. While he was there he noticed that the local Eskimos…
Using Agile Product Portfolio Management
Product managers and organizational leaders turn to portfolio management after they have two or more products to simultaneously manage. It reduces headaches and wasted effort. Traditional product portfolio management…
10 Ways To Avoid Being Labeled a Complainer At Work
How many of you have been on a team at work where the negative energy gets hard to take day in and day out? I know I certainly have. Negativity…
The Real Work of Innovation
Being creative. Generating thousands of ideas. Making employees feel heard, valued, more than a cog in a machine. These are the superficial by-products of an in-depth discipline. Unto themselves,…
The Importance of Digital and Mobile Initiatives
A minority of executives describe their companies as “highly advanced” in their digital pursuits, according to a recent survey from KPMG. The resulting report, titled “Crossing the Enterprise Digital Divide:…
Bank Of America’s Digital Transformation: Where IT Fits In
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is in the midst of sweeping digital transformation involving all aspects of its customer-facing operations. InformationWeek spoke with several of the company’s technology executives to…
6 Parts of Your Business You Better Have Organized
This year, consulting work at some great companies has taken me all over the world. I’ve spent eight of the last 10 months outside of the United States. The constant…