It happened again this morning.  I was attending a speaker series and was engaged in conversation over coffee with the controller for a local lighting distributor.  The conversation centered, as it usually does these days, on the amount of growth or lack thereof we’ve been experiencing over the past year.  This person indicated that while [...]

I believe it was providential that yesterday my working day began and ended with meetings discussing the same topic: how the convicted felon who has paid their debt to society for their crimes, is going to find gainful employment.  In the morning I had a breakfast meeting with Janis Frick and Jan Gannon from Soaring [...]

This is the third post in our series about effective hiring practices.  This is one of the more basic steps in the process, it demands plenty of attention and certainly cannot be skipped, but for the most part it is an opportunity to listen to people talk about themselves without diving in too deep as [...]

I attended a “How To Blog” networking event the other night.  One suggestion for those of us who find writing more difficult than talking, was a video blog.  Great idea I thought.  If someone will listen, I can speak for hours on topics I’m genuinely passionate about.  It just so happens that I sat down [...]

How many times have we as business leaders thought that if we can just outsmart, outmaneuver or outpace our competitors, the business would be ours for the taking?  Especially in commodity driven marketplaces where the competition is fierce and many, just to be able to separate ourselves on something other than price might make all [...]

Just read a good post from Umar Haque in the Harvard Business Review press blog: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/09/is_your_business_innovative_or.html 
He makes some good points that all business leaders should be questioning within their organizations.  Mainly, how are we viewing innovation within our areas of control?  Are we solely concerned with just bringing something new to our customers or are [...]

The following article from the Wall Street Journal does a great job in asking us to slow down the pace at which we communicate and to remember that speed is not all it’s cracked up to be.  It is important to realize that just because we live in an age where speed matters to so [...]

This is a great article for hiring managers.  Just when you think you’ve got the bases covered concerning sexual harassment, here’s a curveball you might not have expected.  There are great, common sense suggestions here to help ward off the opportunity for inappropriate behavior and to help educate those who think they’re doing no harm.  [...]

The following is a fascinating article from the New York Times summarizing an interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.  I believe that all of us as business leaders can learn from our mistakes and that we have not built a great department, location, plant or company until we have faced tremendous odds and overcome [...]