Positive Leadership
Building your brand through Customer Service
There’s been something rattling around in my head for quite a while now. Not quite a full-fledged thesis, but definitely more than a idea. It’s equal parts opportunity, growth and commitment, and it all hinges upon a not so simple question. What the hell happened to Customer Service? I trust I don’t need to make [...]
Thinking through commitment
I’m on the Board of the regional chapter of an international non-profit group. The group is SIM (Society for Information Management), a networking and thought leadership organization for technology leaders. This is the time of year where we start putting together the ballot for next year’s officers. As part of that process our Board President [...]
Shameless self-promotion
As in, I’m about to shamelessly self-promote myself. Well, not actually myself so much as my blog. A few posts back, I wrote about a new feature I had added to the blog, the “Great Posts from Around the Web” widget. Using free ranking services available from Postrank, I built an automatically updating list of [...]
Great posts from around the web
So, a while back I wrote about some upcoming changes / surprises on the blog. The first was a facelift to the blog, which I rolled out a week or so ago. Yesterday, I flipped the switch on the second addition: a list of great posts from around the web on our topics of Leadership [...]
Survive the recession one customer at a time
I used to work for a large, multi-national consulting firm. I was with them for twelve years, the last three spent in business development and sales. One of the “tricks” for developing customer and prospect relationships, was to send a handwritten note after first meetings and important milestones. My employer had no problem ordering nice, [...]
For your consideration…
Last week I wrote a little piece linking “being nice” to personal excellence. I also made a (very) short pitch that the relationship was not only more than casual, but implied there were direct links to superior performance possible with this simple attitude adjustment. I purposely kept the article high on personal observation and low [...]
Send the right message
FedEx, the company trusted by millions of people to deliver their Christmas presents to loved ones, recently announced some belt-tightening initiatives. That’s the real tragedy of the economic downturn, that even great companies get affected negatively. You get most things right, avoid the icebergs and get the ship headed in the right direction, and out [...]
Turning Buzzwords into Reality
As I reported on previously, last week I had the opportunity to moderate a panel entitled “Using Web 2.0 to Drive Top-Line Growth.” The panel did a great job, with several important themes coming out of the panel discussion and the networking afterwards. We distribute feedback forms at every meeting and while the feedback was [...]
IBD’s 10 Secrets to Success
Attending a luncheon presentation at a private club downtown last week, I arrived a bit early. That happens often to me. What can I say – I was raised in the country; it took at least 30 minutes to get anywhere, usually more like an hour. So, especially for meetings very close to me, I’m [...]
Conference take-aways: Strategic Planning and 1 Question Survey
I’m at a National Business Incubation Conference (NBIA), Monday through Wednesday this week, and this is keeping me very busy. The Weekly Reader may also be in jeopardy as I’m scheduled to attend an after-hours event Thursday night after I get home. To while away the useless hotel hours, I thought I’d post a couple [...]
