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I had the worst customer experience of my life recently – with a telecom. And this tracks what I’m hearing about from friends and colleagues. In fact, every time I’ve shared my terrible experience with someone, they’ve told me about their own terrible experience. It’s not without cost to the companies. Bad…
This week, I talk to Belinda Kindschi about how her large, distributed organization of 400 employees stays close and connected. We talk about the processes that they started during Covid, that they still find useful today. And about how she navigates uncertainty. Belinda has worked at Service Alternatives for 33 years, and…
This week, I talked to Mike Gardner about how the entrepreneur’s life has changed radically in the last decade. We talked about how marketing data has sped up the startup phase, how we’ve lost the honeymoon phase, why we need more humility, how business has a lot more in common with sailboats…
Steven Fitzgerald’s purpose isn’t to make a business. It’s to use a business to live his purpose. It’s an atypical mandate for a CEO. But not surprising given that his company, Habanero, “exists to transform people’s experience of work, including that deep, rich feeling we get when we contribute to something meaningful,…
A common question that comes up in our peer mentoring groups and 1-1 company work is, “How does our organizational set up compare to others?” They want to know what they’re missing. And want to know where they should invest time and money — and where they shouldn’t. Because a company isn’t…
We like to use the analogy that an entrepreneur’s life is like a movie. You write the screenplay, direct the action, and star in the production. Of course, you need a team to help you bring it to the screen, and the people you have around you play a major part in…
A 2023 study found that the average CEO has at least 37 meetings per week equating to 72% of their time. That is a depressing statistic. Or perhaps not, if all those meetings are productive. Imagine your life and your business where meetings are engaging, time is well spent. Discussion and debate…
There’s a good chance you became an entrepreneur because you were especially good at (and loved doing) something. There’s also a good chance that instead of doing that thing you love to do, you’re bogged down in other responsibilities. After all, you’re the boss, and the boss must worry about everything. Some…
A person’s job title matters. A lot. It matters to the individual, to the business, and to the outside world. But a company’s approach to titles can have unforeseen implications and unintended consequences. Job titles have value. They’re a type of currency. And where there’s currency, there’s the threat of inflation. That’s…
Where was your business in the spring of 2020? By that time, mounting anxiety around the impact and longevity of COVID-19 was starting to set in. Most places were in some version of lockdown. All organizations were figuring out how to operate virtually. And many were wondering whether they would still be…