Branding ~ Invest in One of Your Best Assets
Your brand should be the focal point of your marketing effort. Many times the sales and operations efforts will swamp the branding and eventually dilute the best. Starbucks saw this first hand in its efforts to improve efficiency when it …
Vision of Small Business
Vision of Small Business Over the Next Decade – The Intuit Future of Small Business Series is an ongoing research study sponsored by Intuit and led by the Institute for the Future and Emergent Research. The research
Ready, Set, Start-up
If planning is essential and story is imperative, what do you do with an idea and no beginning?
Entrepreneurs are those that are willing to plow ahead. They have an idea and they are able to drive through and make …
Marketing – The Irony and Conundrum
Marketers have allowed themselves to get boxed into being the “promotional Flyer department.” The “touchy-feely” go-to group when it needs to look good. An article from Marketing Week describes how difficult it can be the get CEOs and CFOs to …
When going gets tough
When going gets tough, get proactive and strategize. The inclination to immediately cut spending as a reaction to an economic decline is the business version of “fight or flight,” and can cause big problems. Instead, companies should focus on cutting …
Gut Check on Ethics
I belong to a professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi, which was founded in 1904 in part to promote and advance ethics in business.
Over the years I served in leadership, and subsequently we have continued to wrestle with ethics …
No Dissing On the Bus
One season, we ran a tour with two bands on a tour bus, living on the road together for a month at a time over 9 months. It is typical for folks to chide one another, and it can get …
Do you wear the shoes of change?
And influence others to follow in your footsteps? 5 reasons many leaders fail to have lasting impact on employees
Only 20% of leaders truly influence workers in a way that lasts, research indicates. Some leaders lack influence because they don’t …
Do You Suffer From Techno-Ecstasy
Too many companies stay out of the internet. Others rush in with “techno-ecstasy,” often times at the press of employees and without any objective or strategy.
“Hey, look at this gizmo I found, let’s do this!” Whatever the latest marketing …