Success Disguised

Your greatest success might be disguised. That was the case for William Wrigley, Jr. You recognize the name from Wrigley chewing gum. What you might not have known is that Wrigley started out as a soap company,  using chewing gum as a promotional giveaway inside the box of soap. Perhaps your greatest success is lurking…

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Struggling Against the Invisible Bureaucracy of Organizational Culture

In a world of increasing stakeholder expectations and decreasing resources, aggressive cost cutting programs have run their course. Where do you turn next? Increasing a company’s revenues and gross margins, and knowing where (and how) to reduce costs without negatively impacting customer satisfaction, employee productivity and morale, or business processes that are working effectively requires…

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Stop Watering Dead Plants

There is absolutely no doubt that persistence is a key element for sales success. But where does persistence stop and being a pest begin, and when is being persistent just plain dumb? This is not a problem for most salespeople because, as a general rule, they give up far too soon in the selling process.…

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Stop Talking to PWOTs

If you’re going to sell anything, you must deal with real prospects. Your challenge as a salesperson is to separate the real prospects from the unreal ones. That’s what qualifying a prospect is all about. Finding real prospects is not difficult but too few salespeople do it and end up wasting their time trying to…

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Stop Networking and Start NetWORTHing™

In our new social economy, your networth with your network is the only currency that matters.  In this short video clip, find out how to stop networking and start netWORTHing™ to grow your access and influence with your network to help you do your job faster, better and easier!

Stop Making Excuses

Last week I was 10 minutes late for an important meeting across town. Rather than offering up an explanation (LA traffic), I simply said, “I’m sorry for being late.” Then, watching the time, I finished up the meeting on time.  While many might think that the explanation excuse is helpful, it’s actually a waste of…

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Stimulate Local Innovation

Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book by Eric Douglas for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Quantum Leap #6 is all about how to Stimulate the Creative Flow. With rare exception, teams and work groups should be empowered…

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Stimulate Creative Flow By Recognizing Success

More than 40 percent of the leaders in our surveys say they spend too little time working with individuals to help them unlock their creative energies. Asking yourself, “Have I found my own creative flow? Am I helping other people find their creative flow?” Take this free work survey to assess your organizational strengths and…

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Step Off the Hamster Wheel and Embrace Creativity

A recent IBM survey asked global CEOs to name the most important leadership quality they needed, but are hard-pressed to find. According to the survey of more than 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, chief executives believe creativity is the most vital leadership competency. Yes, you read it correctly. More than rigor,…

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Step into Your Leadership Strengths

I was working with a coaching client recently, “unpacking” the results of his Leadership Circle Profile (360˚ feedback assessment). While his profile was very positive–he is doing well as a leader–I was struck that on several less desirable factors (e.g. Passive, Critical, Arrogance) he scored himself high while his employees saw him as low, not…

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Sports coaching vs the voodoo approach

Historically, trainers and coaches rely on the trickle down method of impacting an organization: train or coach the boss and then everyone who reports to that person will change their behavior and the organization will benefit. Or sometimes the opposite approach is taken – put the staff/employees through training, thinking that will change things, only…

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Social Leadership

Last week I attended Salesforce.com’s annual cloud computing conference with 40,000 others. The conference is unconventional in that Sales Professionals, Hackers, Admins and Marketers come together under a common cause. Salesforce.com has clarity of organizational purpose which makes sense to a lot of people. Marc Benioff’s vision seems to be to promote collaboration of ideas…

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Social Capital…How Important Is It?

Think about a recent project, assignment or initiative you worked on over the past month. At some point you probably couldn’t find the information or resource you were looking for in the company knowledge database or on the internet so you picked up the phone, sent an email or got up and physically walked over…

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