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Business Leaders Need to Master These 2 Problems
Excerpt from "On Purpose Leadership: Master the Art of Leading Yourself to Inspire and Impact Others" by Dominick Quartuccio. Copyright © 2021 Dominick Quartuccio. Reproduced by permission of TCK Publishing. As someone who has worked with hundreds of leaders and teams, in both business and personal environments, I see two connected problems in...
Crisis Planning: There’s Never Been a Better Time
Excerpted from "Culture Ignited: 5 Disciplines for Adaptive Leadership," by Jason Richmond (Ideal Outcomes, Inc., September 2021). Crisis planning Few companies had a crisis management plan in place that could handle the pandemic and, in all likelihood, few have one in place now. Yet the time to prepare for a future crisis is right now,...
Small-Scale Manufacturing is the Secret Sauce to Revive Downtowns
Excerpt from Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing by Ilana Preuss. Copyright © 2021 Ilana Preuss. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C. The Secret Sauce: Small-Scale Manufacturing Small-scale manufacturing businesses create a tangible product—in any material—that can be replicated or packaged; my catch all is “hot sauce,...
Think Intellectual Property First to Protect Your Brand From Competition
The following is excerpted from “Brand Tuned” by Shireen Smith (Practical Inspiration Publishing, September 2021) with permission. Think IP first! In chapter 3, we became familiar with the concept of IP, and in chapter 2 we had a short introduction to the problems that can arise from ignoring IP in your branding process. In...
How to Take the Leap and Change Your Life
The following is excerpted from “Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life” by Kim Perell, pp. 3-7 (HarperCollins Leadership, November 2021). It’s scary looking down. Especially when there’s a lot at stake. You know those decisions that make your heart race and your palms sweat? The ones that are so...
Company Values Provide a Plan of Attack to Get Back on Track
Excerpted from "The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More With Less" by Sahil Lavingia, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Sahil Lavingia, 2021. Whenever I have to decide what to do next, I ask myself the question Gary Keller poses...
What Makes an Impact Player and How You Can Be One, Too
Modified excerpt from "Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact" by Liz Wiseman. Copyright © 2021 by the author and reprinted by permission of Harper Business. While everyone brings capability and intelligence to their jobs, much like a card game, some people seem to play their hand better...
Social Media Marketing: How It Could Hurt Your Business
The following is excerpted from "Lies, Damn Lies, and Marketing: Separate Fact From Fiction and Drive Growth” by Atul Minocha (Lioncrest Publishing, August 2021). Flooding social media with information about your product is not good marketing, though it is an all-too-common approach that companies take. As a professor, I often present my students with a real...
Michael Dell Explains the Values That Make His Company So Successful
https://soundcloud.com/penguin-audio/play-nice-but-win-by-michael Excerpted from "PLAY NICE BUT WIN: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader," published Oct. 5, 2021, by Portfolio, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Michael Dell. Back in November 1988, a few months after we went public, I wrote a...
Don’t Hide your Failures, Show the Struggle to Teach Success
The following is excerpted from “Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights From Our Greatest Minds” by Scott Jeffrey Miller. Copyright © 2021 by Scott Jeffrey Miller. Used by permission of HarperCollins Leadership. www.harpercollinsleadership.com. Nely Galán is my sister from another mother. First, we both relentlessly pursue our goals and are unabashedly willing to share our failures along...
How to Use Talent Optimization to Build a Better Business
The following is excerpted from “The Science of Dream Teams: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness” by Mike Zani, pp. 29-35 (McGraw Hill, July 2021).” Through the hot summer of 2018, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, slept for nights on end at his assembly plant in Fremont, California. Musk had vowed that...
How to Identify and Offset Risk to Build a Business That Lasts
The following is excerpted from "Rogue Waves: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change" by Jonathan Brill (McGraw Hill, August 2021). Netscape founder Marc Andreesen, now a prolific startup investor, describes entrepreneurial risk management in terms of peeling an onion. On day one of a startup, you have a bulb full of...
Surviving and Thriving Post-Pandemic in a World of Constant Digital Transformation
The following is excerpted from “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants” by R "Ray" Wang. Copyright © 2021 by R "Ray" Wang. Used by permission of HarperCollins Leadership. www.harpercollinsleadership.com. Over the past decade, digital transformation has evolved from being the “new thing” in business to “business as usual.” Before...
The 6 Elements of a Great Workplace Culture Your Startup Needs in 2021
The following is excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from "Upstanding: How Company Character Catalyzes Loyalty, Agility, and Hypergrowth" by Frank Calderoni. Copyright © 2021 by Anaplan, Inc. All rights reserved. When I began my career at IBM, it was common for people to work 10, 20, even 30 years for the same company....
A Blockbuster Retail Franchisee Reveals Why The Chain Was Built to Fail
The following is adapted from the book "Built to Fail: The Inside Story of Blockbuster’s Inevitable Bust." Blockbuster was built by one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, Wayne Huizenga. Before turning it into one of the most powerful brands in the entertainment world, he started Waste Management with a $5,000 loan and one...
Leading with Authenticity: How to Become and Remain an Authentic Brand
The following is excerpted from “Make It Don’t Fake It” by Sabrina Horn (2021), ISBN 978-1523091492, with permission from Berrett-Koehler Publishers. There are many definitions of “brand.” I think of it simply as the unique relationship a person has with a company and what the company produces and sells. Successful brands create the feeling of...
Expert Advice for the 4 Million People Who Launched a Business in 2020
The following is adapted from "Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams" by Matt Blumberg. In April 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning to wreak havoc on markets, commerce, communities and the general public, I started a business along with a group of friends. That’s not as...
Here’s Why Market Timing is Everything When it Comes to Startup Success
The following is excerpted from “SUPER FOUNDERS: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups” by Ali Tamaseb. Copyright © 2021. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. In 1995, General Magic, the startup company where Tony Fadell worked, built an early version of a smartphone. The hybrid telephone-computer was unlike anything the industry had seen before....
How to Maximize Your Profitable Growth in Your Chosen Market Segments
The following is excerpted from "Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive" by Jonathan L.S. Byrnes and John S. Wass, pp. 141-145 (McGraw Hill, May 2021). You are what you sell. Your customers are the front-wheel drive that pulls you through your marketplace. All too many companies today implicitly assume...
The Secret Behind Unicorn Success of StockX? Start Before You’re Ready
The following is excerpted from "Big Little Breakthroughs: How Small, Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results" by Josh Linkner, courtesy of Post Hill Press. When you think of the most influential leaders in the $366 billion global footwear industry, you probably imagine luxe designers such as Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, or Louis Vuitton. Or maybe you...