To stay competitive, Brand U companies are shaving costs, killing marginal product brands, cutting product lines, reengineering processes, outsourcing non-core processes, projectizing work, and reducing suppliers. Products and services that routinely increased in price each year are now stabilizing as competitive pressures and customer resistance cap price increases. This is also occurring in Brand U …
With all the talk about the New Economy and the rising Dow Jones, average families are consuming less and buying more carefully. More consumers are buying based on real and perceived value. According to Mike Treacy and Fred Wiersma in The Discipline of Market Leaders, competitive Brand U companies identify value added characteristics, features, or …
What risks do Brand U’s face? Common business risks include shifting paradigms, changing demographics, intense competition, increased customer expectations, baffling technology, globalization, and changing stakeholder expectations. Organizational risks include diverse workforce, changing worker expectations, new rules and regulations, and cost/quality/delivery/technology confusion. Brand U risks involve work/family balance, increased work, increased stakeholder expectations, more work-less time, …
Good communications starts with good listening. The problem is we’re talking more and listening less. No wonder communication, or the lack of it, hampers our work effectiveness and even relationship happiness. Many of us have read John Gray’s Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. Well, the solution to all relationships comes down …
Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard zoologist, has spent decades exploring what makes different species do what they do. He believes our deepest traits and tendencies are not implanted in our minds by culture but hardwired into our genes through millions of years of evolution making us into who we are, defining how we work, …
Tell people to never allow themselves to become victims… They should go somewhere else if that’s the way they feel. Constantly refine your gene pool … by promoting your best performers and weeding out your worst. Grade on a curve … If I get 10 people, one is a star and one won’t cut it. …
Geniuses look at problems at all angles. Geniuses make their thoughts visible through diagrams, graphs, etc. Geniuses produce lots of good but also bad ideas. Geniuses combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts. Geniuses force unconnected relationships to see things others miss. Geniuses think in opposites or can accept ambiguities, ambivalence, or incompatible ideas. Geniuses …
We’ve entered an age of information glut Machines set a frantic pace for us Humans are not machines Computers exact a physical as well as a mental toll Technology can double cross you Computing is not a social activity The computer can steal your job Nerds rule the world The unknown still frightens us …
Brand U’s take risk and are thrill seekers. The dictionary defines risk as the “potential for the realization of unwanted negative consequences of an event.” So, Murphy is alive and well – if something can happen, it will. We can try to understand and anticipate Murphies or we can be victimized by them. The choice …
How bad is our listening? We may remember as little as 25% of what we heard in the last two days. Poor listening is also risky! Poor listening resulted in the 1977 runway collision at Tenerife Airport in the Canary Islands, resulting in 583 deaths. Poor listening results in the wrong coffee order, poor quality …