Here are recommended survey questions to determine each of your team member's level of resilience (scale of 1-low to 5-high). If you have a psychologically safe environment you have the option of this being anonymous or not.  If you are not sure, I recommend anonymity to increase the likelihood of full disclosure. I have all the freedom I need … Continue reading How to measure and build resilience in your team

Do not let your business outgrow the people Just knowing that a learning organization is a growing organization is not enough. We must ensure that the learning sticks. Understanding the basics of how the brain receives, stores, and retrieves information is critical to the process.Author James Zull writes the following in his new book, The … Continue reading Create a Learning Culture

Article Summary  The article focuses on a few key areas at which successful entrepreneurial ventures excel.  The premise is a startup venture within an enterprise but I think these apply to any organizational size or genesis that has a fledgling business model working. I summarized the points below. Please note that I combined a few as they … Continue reading How incumbents successfully scale their new businesses

Jim Collins, the management guru, tells us that his research of the most successful companies over long periods consistently points to get the "Who" correct before the "What" and then getting people into the right seats. The "Who" first approach is abundantly supported with core values and purpose leading the way.This makes sense to me.However, … Continue reading How do I know I have all the right seats, Professor Collins?

Food for thought After decades of study, experience, and working and speaking with hundreds of CEOs and companies around the world over the past few years, I have found the following, for the most part: We do change wrong - 70% of change initiatives failWe do decisions making wrong - We rarely have a standard processWe do vision wrong - Visions are clear, detailed, … Continue reading Leaders, for the most part, do almost everything wrong…but don’t have to

Hiring? - Flip a coin There is data that shows the chance of a successful hire is fifty percent.Neuroscience shares that the standard interview process is fundamentally flawed and rife with biases. I believe that the worst way to hire someone is the standard interview process (e.g., strengths and weaknesses, how would you act in this situation?). The best … Continue reading How to Design a Better Hiring Process

The most successful leaders stop solving the problem right in front of them and focus on solving the problem that created the problem right in front of them. Paraphrased excerpt from Upstream, Dan Heath's latest book, follows. I highly recommend this book for leaders! Where is my itinerary? (How Expedia saved $100M by looking upstream) In 2012, Ryan … Continue reading How Expedia saved $100M by looking upstream

Some things science knows that business doesn’t One of the worst ways to hire the best people consistently is a face to face interviewCustomers do NOT know what they wantThe best enduring strategy is about being unique, not the bestHumans are crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven beings but predictably soFeedback is one of the worst … Continue reading Popular business myths

Why People Do What They Do & What It Means For YouBob Moesta has had the greatest influence on my perspective as it relates to sales and marketing. I wish I had found him decades ago as my life as CMO and CRO would have been SO much easier.Enjoy this 45-minute podcast episode explaining the science behind decision making related … Continue reading Sales and Marketing secrets revealed by a master

Emotions are created - literally created - by each human, each tribe and culture Lisa Feldman Barrett's startling, challenging, and fascinating book, How Emotions are Made, shares 20+ years of research across multiple disciplines with meta-analysis across thousands of studies.  In her book and subsequent findings, she posits that we are not born with built-in emotions but we create … Continue reading The human brain is a master of deception