Posted on November 14, 2007
You are who you spend time with. Their outlook rubs off on you and becomes a part of who you are. When Norman Vincent Peale said, “Get rid of all negative people in your life”, in the The Power Of Positive Thinking, this is what he was talking about. Sometimes negative is packaged as ‘constructive’. …
Posted on October 25, 2007
Too often, we prepare for the worst and then good things happen – and we freak out. I’ve seen this in my business life: A company launches, prepares backup plans for the worst case scenario, then their business takes off and they can’t handle the fame, money or credit. They implode on their own arrogance …
Posted on October 16, 2007
I call abundance thinkers Big Pie People. They see the pie of life as big enough for everyone to get a slice. They’re the ones that discuss possibilities instead of limitations. They approach every shortage as a creative challenge. They see the light at the end of the tunnel rather than the darkness that surrounds …
Posted on October 9, 2007
I believe that most of the damage we do to the world, including our employees, is a matter of bad habits or improper design. Most environmental damage is the result of a design that makes waste as a byproduct of profits. Most leadership damage comes from the insular, self-promoting habits we form early on in …
Posted on September 19, 2007
I’m doing a speaking engagement tomorrow in Orlando at the Convention Center inside Disney World. Every time I stay here, I’m reminded of the service legacy of the great Walt Disney. He was one of the first people ever attributed with the saying, “Long after people forget what you did for them, they will remember …
Posted on September 10, 2007
If you want great customer service, eliminate any filters between the customer and the owner. Mark Cuban (broadcast.com now Dallas Mavs) taught me this by example. Any customer of either company, be it a business customer or a basketball fan, can complain to Mark directly via email. He reads every one of them. That changes …
Posted on September 6, 2007
Sometimes you have to act “as if.” As if you owned the company. As if you were the chairman or CEO. As if you actually cared about the company’s long term reputation. As if you took accountability for the lives of your coworkers. Too often, you let the title on your business card keep your …
Posted on August 28, 2007
I spoke at a publisher’s conference in 2004 and had a chance to hob nob with several major newspaper editors. At a lunch, I asked several of them as to how the policy of front page corrections came about. What I found out was not only interesting, it was insightful. Newspapers run corrections on the …
Posted on August 17, 2007
I just had a chance to read about Patrick Lencioni’s new business fable: The Three Signs Of A Miserable Job, and it got me thinking about how we need to be better designers of the work experience. Too many companies have dozens of jobs that are thankless, never measured, highly repetitive and soul-sucking. Think about …
Posted on August 13, 2007
It’s one thing to work on your likeability factor, it is another to be too nice. If I’m in a crowded parking lot, and a Wookie in a Hummer wants my spot, I let the Wookie win. If I’m trying to get the last shopping cart at the grocery store and a Wookie grabs it …
