Celebrating Life and Relationships with Neen James
What can I say? Neen James rocks! The petite fireball lives up to her Attention Pays message, commanding a room of over 100 CEO’s and their teams last Friday at our 13th Annual Growth Strategies Breakfast at the Union League of Philadelphia. I loved welcoming her back for an “encore” performance. She was the Key…
A 4 Step Formula for Talent Success
Beneath Mike Albero’s calm demeanor is a friendly, outgoing personality, who is passionate about his family and community as well as his business and team. “Our biggest challenge – like a lot of businesses these days – is finding and hiring talent. Candidly, we were going about it the wrong way. We were looking for…
Three Execution “How To’s” to Help You Nail the Fundamentals
I’ve always loved the story about Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Packers, who would start off every football season with the now famous line, “Gentleman, this is a football.”
17 Inspiring Quotes about Entrepreneurship, Life, and Leadership
I was invigorated and inspired by many of the thought-leaders, authors and business leaders that spoke before the over 800 person crowd, in Denver last week at the Gazelles’ Scaling Up Summit. But I was blown away by the workshop conducted by Jeff Hoffman for our Scaling Up Coaching Community. An accomplished entrepreneur and innovator…
The Power of Perseverance: A behind the scenes look at Ron Jaworski Golf
Lots of words could describe Liz and Ron Jaworski. Competitive, enthusiastic, passionate, committed to helping others, family-oriented, motivational. But the word that comes to my mind is Perseverance. In an industry that is plagued with negative profitability and non-existent cash flow, has seen countless golf courses closed, is not just seasonal (their six golf course…
5 Management Strategies to grow your Employees and Company
Many entrepreneurs want to build a growth company, but few succeed. It takes discipline, perseverance and an incredible amount of time, energy and commitment. Most of all you have to be intentional. At almost $50 Million in revenue and approaching 150 employees, Cenero has beaten the odds. For over two decades, Chris Henry, the CEO…
What’s your biggest Challenge? It’s People – again!
Last month we shared the results from our 12th Annual Growth Strategies survey and no surprise, when we asked CEO’s about their biggest challenge for growth, the answer was People. Attracting and retaining talent, being a better Coach and Manager and creating an engaged and aligned workforce were all cited as major stumbling blocks to…
How to Win the “Great Game” of Business
Mid-Atlantic Behavioral Health, a growing therapeutic firm in Delaware, is dedicated to supporting individuals, families, and groups to reach their fullest potential. And their team is committed to taking an active role in enhancing the quality of mental health care in their community. Enthusiastic students of Verne Harnish’s “Scaling Up” business operating system, Traci Bolander, the CEO,…
Strategy to Exit: 7 Steps to Increase your Valuation and Improve your Business Too!
If you’re the owner of a privately-held company, eventually you’ll need to make a decision about the future of the company. All things come to an end after all – including your role in your business. But have you decided what you will do? You’ve got three choices, says Rich Mander’s of Freescale Coaching,
A Baker’s Dozen: 13 Lessons Verne Harnish taught me about “Scaling Up”
It’s been almost a decade since I first heard Verne Harnish speak at a two-day “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” workshop in Washington D.C. about “Scaling Up” a small business. It was, to put it bluntly, engrossing, overwhelming and life-changing.
7 Tips to make the 2nd Half a Success
What accomplishment are you most proud of as the first half of 2017 rapidly comes to a close? What’s your biggest challenge in the 2nd half?
Why do people follow? More importantly, why would people follow you? With the end of the first half of the year looming, if you haven’t asked yourself this question recently, it’s a good time to do so as you work on refining your plans. Great leadership involves many factors but one of the most important,…
4 Reasons Why Your Employees aren’t Engaged
Why do businesses underperform? HINT: It’s not about having the right Strategy OR the right Plan. The secret, according to the study, lies in engagement and communication. And, even though the study was published almost a decade ago, the reality hasn’t changed very much, if at all.
15 Lessons from a 4th Gen Entrepreneur
It’s Planning Season again… It’s time to pull your team together and celebrate your accomplishments, talk about what you want to continue to do AND what you need to stop doing. (As Murray’s character discovered, you’ll keep stepping in the same pothole of ice-cold water if you don’t learn from your mistakes. :))
10 Picks for late Summer Reading
There’s plenty of time for summer reading…almost half of August is left and of course Labor Day weekend – whatever these final weeks might hold in store for you. If you haven’t had a chance to “catch up” on your pile of shame, I’ll add to your list with these 10 enlightening authors. 🙂 With…
THE GREAT GAME of BUSINESS: Coming to Philadelphia
When I was a young engineer at Procter and Gamble, Jack Stack was already becoming a legend in the business world for what he was able to do with a traditional, blue-collar workforce.
The Five Problems with Having a Conversation…
What’s wrong with having a conversation?
For starters, conversations take place in real time and we can’t always control what we’re going to say. Some can be difficult to have and can get loud and unpleasant. Texts, emails, postings let us present the self as we want to be. They allow us to delete and edit. Our technology gives us control.
How to Fly a Horse – or the “Secret” History of Creation
Creative genius is a myth. And great flashes of inspiration are never the work of just one person, even if one person gets all the credit.
So argues author Kevin Ashton, technology pioneer and entrepreneur in his best-selling book, “How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery”.
7 Leadership Lessons from John Ratliff
Standing room only! That’s how popular our 10th Annual Growth Strategies Breakfast was early this month. I’m sure it was because our speaker, John Ratliff, the Founder and former CEO of Appletree Answers has broad appeal to entrepreneurs and business leaders. He’s also refreshingly honest and transparent in sharing his own successes and mistakes as a CEO.
4 Critical Factors to Be a Better Leader (TED Talk #7)
“When you teach people about how their brains work, they become more effective managers as well as leaders.”
So says Dr. David Rock, Director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and a frequent speaker on TED as well as Google Tech Talks on such topics as “How to be a Provocateur” and “The Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distractions, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day”.
Ten Years Later – a TED Talk to inspire
In 2003, Jessica Jackley heard a speech by Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh who had pioneered the idea of microcredit: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
What REALLY Motivates Us to Work…TED Talk #5
As a teenager in Israel, Dan Ariely suffered life-threatening burns over 70% of his body when a magnesium flare, used to illuminate battlefields, exploded. While he was overcoming his injuries during an extremely long and painful recovery process, he began to ask questions – of himself as well as human behavior in general.
You Can’t Be Good at Everything (“Talk” #4)
Not words that many of us want to hear – but seriously, if you’ve had enough life experience, you know that it’s true. And the ground-breaking research done over the past 40 years by the folks at Gallup backs it up.
As human beings (and managers) we each have talents, behaviors and thought processes that come to us easily, with little to no effort, what some would say are “second nature”. There are others, however, at which we will never excel, no matter how much we practice and work to improve.
Tweak Your Style, Maximize Results
What really works if you want to communicate effectively?
It’s not necessarily what you would think, according to Adam Grant, our #3 TED Talk for our management video countdown.
Amy Cuddy wasn’t supposed to become a successful scientist. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to finish her undergraduate degree. Early in her college career, Cuddy suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, and doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree.
5 Tips for Engaging and Retaining your Top Talent
You’ve just spent valuable time, energy and money over the last 90 days looking for the RIGHT Talent to fill a critical seat in your company – AND you’ve found an amazing A Player who fits the bill perfectly for what you need to grow the company.
But now that you’ve made a great hire, how do you keep them? (HINT: It’s not about the money.)
Is the “War for Talent” constraining your growth?
What do you do when you’re fighting from the trenches every day to find and attract the right people to your team? How are you competing with the “big guys” when it comes to offering the right opportunities to A players who can help you grow? More importantly, how do you find the time to FIND the right players and not WASTE your time with the wrong ones?
A “Magic Wand” for building Accountability
Holding people accountable can be one of the most time-consuming and thankless jobs out there. Maybe that’s why many leaders struggle to do it – or don’t do it as consistently and relentlessly as they should. The payback isn’t always immediate or apparent, the conversations can be difficult and there’s way too many other priorities.
Are you ready to take the LEAP?
It’s just as important to follow the money as follow your passion. And, contrary to popular belief, you’re better off doing only a very few things that you do exceptionally well – and finding others to do the rest.
My mother was a librarian.
That’s the “excuse” that I often give when my clients and other people in my circle accuse me of overloading them in the book recommendation department.
No Fairy Godmothers – 3 Things every Leader needs to Know
How do YOU find and hire the right players for your company? That’s the question that was posed at a CEO Roundtable I attended a few weeks ago. A challenging topic for sure. While hiring the right people can certainly difficult, especially for the small mid-market, there are methodologies and assessments out there (as well…
3 Key Qualities of a Successful Leader
Vern Harnish once said “There are two qualities I have noticed in those who get where they want to go. While intelligence, passion, and discipline are all useful qualities, success belongs to those who have these two attributes – an insatiable need to learn and an unquenchable penchant for action.”
But there is one more missing quality that all leaders need to have – if they want to be successful.
Calling all “time-starved” CEO’s and Executives….
With Quarter 4 of 2014 sneaking up on us, 2015 is just around the corner! I hope you hit all your goals for Q1 and Q2 and on your way to nailing your Rocks and achieving your key initiatives for 2014. And – if you want to get a head start on 2015 or if…
A good “test” of a great strategy is how often you say NO. A really solid and well-thought out business strategy means that you’re saying NO more than you’re saying YES…to new opportunities, new people AND potential new clients.
Happy Summer! For many of us (even the snow lovers) it definitely was a very long winter. But it’s time to take a step back from “the game”, get perspective on what’s been accomplished and plan to make the second half a game winner.
4 Challenges and 4 “Tips” for 2014 – Part 2
If these are your challenges this year, read on here for 6 more tips and tools to help you!
4 Challenges and 4 “Tips” for 2014 – Part 1
What’s more important is what these CEO’s are doing to overcome them. And if they’re issues that are facing you, what are YOU doing?
3 “How To’s” to Nail the Fundamentals
Why the fundamentals? Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Packers, was famous for saying at the start of every season, “Gentleman, this is a football.” Lombardi knew the power of fundamentals. Randy Pausch, the former Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2008, also spoke to the “basics” in…
Are you a Lead Generator…or just “Taking Orders”?
Are you a Lead Generator … or just “Taking Orders” Before you take a complete break for the holidays, make sure to plan some “think” time to clear your head and get ready for 2014. Your Marketing and Sales plans are just the place to start. Take our quick 5 question quiz to help prime the pump. Guaranteed to give you some great ideas for leveraging your time and improving your top line in the weeks and months ahead!
The 4th Essential Execution Tool
“A lot of you may love mankind, but you hate people.”
A good understanding of the “human factor” behind great execution however is what’s missing in many companies. While the right tool kit can help make execution a lot less frustrating, as any good craftsman knows, you can’t just have the right tools for a job; you also need to know what material you’re working with.
And in the case of business, that means people…
4 Essential “Tools” for your “Execution” toolbox
While duct tape may be the “survival tool” of choice for the guys from “Mythbusters” – unfortunately for most business leaders, duct tape won’t do it when it comes aligning your team and driving great Execution. Great execution certainly takes a lot of discipline but if you’ve got the right tool kit to leverage, it can be a lot less frustrating and significantly more rewarding.
The Dark Side of Success…and 3 Lessons Learned
There’s a Chinese proverb, “Failure is the Mother of Success”. Many of us work hard to achieve success, to “climb the mountain”, but in our efforts to get to where ever it is that we’re going, not only do we forget to look back and celebrate how far we’ve come – we also sometimes forget that the pinnacle can be the most dangerous part of the journey. For with great achievements can come hubris – the dark side of success. And Phil Jaurigue has experienced that first hand.
What’s your Forecast for 2014?
As 2014 approaches, I thought I’d share the following “forecast” about what the upcoming year could hold.
Dear Small and Mid-Market Executive –
The past few years have held their own share of challenges for companies of all sizes, but for you in the small and mid-market space they’ve been particularly stressful.
…
A “cheat sheet” for “Navigating the Growth Curve”
Several years ago, James Fischer, had an ambitious goal. The co-Founder of the Origin Institute, a research and consulting company out of Boulder, Colorado, wanted to understand and decipher the patterns, behaviors and the characteristics in entrepreneurial enterprises – and – develop best practices to better navigate the trials and tribulations of business growth.
Six years and over 700 CEO interviews later, Jim documented his findings in the book, “Navigating the Growth Curve: 9 Fundamentals that Build a Profit-driven, People-centered, Growth-smart Company”.
Last week I spent five wonderful days touring the Douro Valley in Portugal with my husband, my sister and brother-in-law. The spa/ hotel where we stayed had terrific service and accommodations; we ate fabulous Portuguese food and took several day trips to the visit the local wineries that are ubiquitous in this part of the world.
The views were breathtakingly gorgeous as we wandered around impossibly high mountains in a tiny little Volvo, attempting to navigate unfamiliar roads in a foreign country.
Four simple solutions if you’re “Stuck”…
“You don’t look like a chemical engineer,”another (male) chemical engineer said to me, upon being introduced as his new colleague, as if I was some strange aberration of the “species”. (Twenty years later, I still get a laugh remembering his reaction.)
“What’s an engineer supposed to look like?”, I asked him with a smile. It wasn’t the first time that I had heard that type of comment from a man upon introducing myself (certainly not the last) and why get angry when humor can often be the best response?
Five Failures or Five Reminders?
Take this short quiz (courtesy of the speakers at the Fortune Leadership Summit in Orlando a week ago) and see!
If a tsunami affected your business tomorrow, would you still stay on track with your plan?
A few years ago, that exact scenario happened to one of our clients, who was implementing the “Habits”. Thanks to the Habits, the executive team had a plan, were aligned to their priorities, and had great meeting rhythms. The whole company remained focused, despite the turbulence and they still hit most of their goals for the year.
So what’s your “tsunami” goal? If your business was affected by a major crisis tomorrow, would you be able to stay focused on your goals and deal with the disaster too?
Have you hit “the wall”? Or are you just running in place?
Someplace between $5M and $25M, most companies hit “the wall”, and executives feel like they’re running in place – no matter what they do to try and grow their businesses.
Not a straightforward or simple task as many of you know. Predicting, delegating and managing effectively take more than having the right talent.
How to create a Culture of Accountability…
For the fourth year in a row, “Holding key people accountable” has been in the top 2 challenges that CEO’s have cited on our Growth Strategies Survey of small and mid-market businesses throughout the region.
When one CEO in the audience, somewhat perplexed asked, “Why does that keep coming up? Aren’t you helping them to do something about it?” I was a bit stumped for a minute. The answer seemed obvious to me – but maybe not to him.
How to Become an Exceptional Leader
Discovering your personal mission in life is not necessarily a straightforward journey (as I wrote last week) but it is certainly a worthwhile one.
Having a clear sense of what your mission is, and being able to communicate that sense of purpose to others is an essential part of exceptional leadership – and – the basis for gaining others’ commitment to follow you.
How to become an exceptional Leader…part II
At a CEO dinner that I attended last night, Craig Burris, the President and Founder of SmartCEO magazine, asked me a thought-provoking question that led to an intriguing dinner conversation amongst our table members. “What is your personal mission?”, he enquired. And quickly followed that up with, “And what’s your vision for your company?”
Jeff Backal and Merrick Rosenberg have been partners in Team Builders Plus for twenty years. Over that time their team of trainers and facilitators has worked with thousands of businesses including over 60 of the current Fortune 100 as well as smaller mid-market companies. They’ve had lots of successes with their clients as well as being named aPhilly…
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