“Innovating has become the buzz-word of American management. Firms have found that most of the things that can be outsourced or reengineered have been (worryingly, by their competitors as well). The stars of American business tend today to be innovators, such as Dell, Amazon, and Wal-Mart, which have produced ideas or products that have changed …
I’m hooked. Everyday, friends email me Internet humor. I’m pounding on my keyboard and I notice that I need a humor fix. My workday involves pleasing clients, appeasing stakeholders, fixing problems, acquiring/dispensing resources, or resolving disputes. This is the typical stuff of work. And frankly, it’s not always fun. These email jokes make me more …
What are the critical success practices that make Brand U successful? Chances are your productivity is based on how you manage customer, time, quality, communications, risk, technology, and performance commitments. The seven Brand U practices that ensure our sanity and survival in today’s turbulent workplace seem to be: Customer management. The customer is the beginning …
The cult of disposability during the reengineering craze changed the work landscape for good. Loyalty is sometimes hard to find. Here’s the rub. Knowledge management needs cooperative workers to share their knowledge. The question for the Brand U organization: ‘Is how do we gather, organize, refine, and commercialize our knowledge?’ The personal Brand U question …
More managers want to get their arms around what a company does extremely well, its core competencies. Once the company has done this, it wants Brand U’s to embrace and enhance these competencies. The thinking goes something like this. We all have valuable data, information, and knowledge. If a team does a critical job and …
An important role of middle management and first level supervision was to organize people and control activities. Do this that way by this time. But, Brand U self managed teams and individuals more often are responsible for these activities. So what does Brand U management do now? They manage relationships between processes, projects, and teams …
Technology is running ahead of our abilities to understand and manage. We’re inundated with new tools. But, what induces us to use the new tools? Last summer, a friend and I were fishing in the mountain lakes of central Oregon. The biggest city, Bend was 40 miles away. Beep … beep … beep from his …
Processes: A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.[i] Markets move to the most efficient processes. And, organizations move to the most effective processes. The difference? Market efficiency means moving to supply/demand processes where things can be done more quickly and at least cost. Organizational effectiveness means developing the ‘right’ internal processes …
David Andrusia and Rick Haskins in Brand Yourself make the case for personal branding: “Branding is such a powerful tool in selling a product that it makes perfect sense that we as individuals should brand ourselves – thereby creating a strong, positive sense of ourselves (the product) and our services that is different and better …
Have one conversation at a time Build upon the ideas of others Defer judgment Encourage wild ideas Stay focused on the topic[i] [i] “Wanna Be More Creative? Follow the Rules, Damn It!” Inc., May, 1998, p. 10.