The power of individuation
The power of individuation The front page of this morning’s New York Times shows a picture of a child. The caption? “A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation.” The message hits home. It’s hard to get your head around half a million children. Half […]
Value pricing
Value pricing I can hear your excuses for why it is not necessary, in this particular case, to spend much time and attention assessing and communicating the value of your proposed service. “I’ve served this client for a long time,” you say; “he already knows the value, it would look strange if I now started […]
Threat as a negotiating tool
Threat as a negotiating tool A threat is a statement that takes the form of: “Do X… or else I will do Y”. In negotiations, that typically means some form of: “Raise the price you’ll pay/reduce the price you’ll charge… or else I will abandon these negotiations.” Since the possibility of “no deal” is implicit […]
The one-minute culture survey
The one-minute culture survey There are many questions you can ask a company’s leaders to start understanding its corporate culture. Here’s one of the most revealing ones: what would you fire someone for? Outside of the obvious, such as stealing and lying, what behavior would you consider a deal breaker offense? The answers will tell you what’s […]
What’s your team uniquely positioned to accomplish?
What’s your team uniquely positioned to accomplish? This month, we’re working with the leadership team of the global Shared Services organization at a Fortune Top 100 company. How can the team best come together to make Shared Services a competitive advantage? The team quickly identified a need for closer alignment. Team members need to know […]
What’s your blackberry doing in this meeting?
What’s your blackberry doing in this meeting? Ever found yourself sneaking a peek at your blackberry under the table during a meeting? (Or even thumb-typing away openly?) Are you experiencing an emergency – are your messages so urgent that they can’t wait until the meeting ends? My guess is you’re not in a crisis, you’re […]
Hope creep
Hope creep The R&D leadership of a large Integrated Oil & Gas Major struggled with this question at one of our recent workshops: “How do you end someone’s favorite project?” Large R&D and product development organizations need to balance a portfolio of innovations, and they constantly face trade-offs between different projects that look more or less promising […]
Creating followership
Creating followership This weekend, I had breakfast with a successful executive of one of the large Telecommunications firms. He had just completed the turnaround of an underperforming business unit. After years of gradually declining sales, the unit is growing profitably again. “I think I now know how to motivate the team against a goal,” he […]
Cascading the message down the line
Cascading the message down the line This week, two of our clients each asked the same question: “What are best practices for cascading a leadership message down the line? Somehow my message does not seem to arrive at the front line; it gets stuck in the middle.” One of the most frequent causes of failure […]
People believe what they say themselves
People believe what they say themselves People generally believe what they say themselves. Strangely, they don’t believe what YOU tell them nearly as often. What implications does this have? Perhaps you can illustrate the point you want to make with a powerful story, rather than provide the facts and the argument of the case. Perhaps […]