How do you want to earn your living?

January 4, 2012

  I needed some allergy medicine the other day. Normally I would use diphenhydramine (the active ingredient in the overpriced Benadryl) but I also planned to enjoy some alcohol that day and I didn’t want to mix the two. So I went shopping for loratadine (the active ingredient in the overpriced Claritin). You can probably […]

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Employees are people not cogs

December 24, 2011

I just came across this article on Volkswagen shutting off email to some employees in an effort to improve work-life balance. I understand the thinking and feeling behind this action. People feel that the culture isn’t serving them but they feel powerless to change it. They want some powerful outside force (outside as in – […]

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And the experience starts…now

December 19, 2011

This weekend I experienced a truly awful and shortsighted customer experience strategy. I went with a friend to the Moncler store in NY. She wanted to buy a coat. When we got there, they told us that we had to wait before entering the store. Why? Well, they like to provide excellent customer service and […]

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The System vs. the Hero

December 7, 2011

I’ve worked for two large corporations as an employee and with several more as a consultant. Some I enjoyed, others were painful. But one thing that was true for all of them is that it was difficult to get anything done. Very difficult. This is one of the natural afflictions of a large enterprise – […]

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Retention is cheaper recruiting

November 29, 2011

Your employees make a choice every day about whether to continue working for you. So if you have an employee today that you’d like to still be an employee tomorrow, you have to re-recruit them. Every day. Or, you can let them leave because they’ve found a better deal elsewhere, and you can go out […]

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Recruiting is marketing

November 15, 2011

I’ve got a friend who is in the midst of the recruiting process at a consulting firm. She’s had several rounds of interviews. Her last round seemed to have gone well. She followed protocol and sent a nice thank you note after the interview. And then, nothing. For more than a week she heard nothing […]

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Business is not an island

November 14, 2011

It is the nature of any field to become more specialized and more focused over time. In Aristotle’s time, even during the Renaissance, it was possible for a very educated person to know all there was to know. That is no longer true. Every field of study has become more and more specialized as the […]

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Leadership changes the world

November 14, 2011

People do not need to be led to where they’ve already been. But they do need people to show them new places, new ideas, new possibilities, etc. And so, every act of leadership is an act of changing the world. If you’re not changing the world in some way, you are not leading.

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No cents at all

November 7, 2011

Today my Yahoo page brought me yet another update on the financial results of a major corporation. I know, I know. These updates come out all the time. There’s nothing new here. True. But maybe it’s time we started acknowledging that the emperor has no clothes. It is simply ridiculous to evaluate a company based […]

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The best offer

November 1, 2011

If you have an relationship with someone (especially when it’s exclusive) and want to continue that relationship, you must make sure that at all times what you offer them is the best offer they could get. Say you have a boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse. If you want to keep that relationship you must make sure […]

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