I recently read To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild, a book about the First World War, and although I was trying to avoid reading another business book, it pointed to some things very relevant in the business world. When learning about the mistakes the British military leadership made in World War I that literally cost… Read More Don’t fight the last war
There are two ways of looking at employees, and for them to look at themselves, either a fixed mindset where they either possess or lack talent, or a growth mindset, where your team can develop new skills. An article in the Harvard Business Review, “How Companies Can Profit from a ‘Growth Mindset’” by Stanford’s Carol… Read More Foster a growth mindset in your company to improve growth
There are many applications for machine learning, but one of the most exciting is using it to create hypothesis to test. An article in the Economist, “Computer says ‘try this’,” discusses many of the ways computers are now creating hypothesis to move medicine, farming and even cooking forward. There are already many projects using machine… Read More Using machine learning to develop your hypothesis
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Reid Hoffman’s book Alliance and his innovative ideas on how to structure the employee company relationship. One issue that some people raised to me was it sounded great, but if your company does not believe in creating tours of duty, it was not very useful. I am not… Read More Define your own tour of duty
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review, “Making Charity Pay” by Michael Norton and Jill Avery, shows how business can use philanthropy to improve profitability. They point out that charity can enhance customer loyalty, brand awareness and sales. To impact metrics positively, however, you need to implement the cause-based initiatives appropriately. Norton and Avery… Read More Using charity to improve revenue
I have always said the best measure of a company and its customer relationships is not how they avoid unhappy customers but how they deal with unpleasant situations. Inevitably, you will do something that some customers do not like. Rather than focusing on avoiding the inevitable, there is more value in building a strong plan… Read More Turning unhappy customers
For those who watch sports, we almost universally admire the “high-motor” players. It might be fans, announcers, teammates, but whoever it is, we love players who give an incredible effort on every single play. In baseball, it is the player who sprints to first base even on a pop-up with a 99 percent chance of… Read More Are you a high-motor worker?
