Month: January 2014

  • Successful Businesses Ask and Answer Two Questions Relentlessly

    What business are we in?  Who are our customers?  These two questions surface your most important business challenges and opportunities. Even if you are an internal service provider in a bigger organization, these are still the right questions. Here is a simple case I am dealing with right now that focuses primarily on the first question. […]

  • Three Secrets to Managing Interruptions With Less Stress for Everyone

    1.  Define your “interrupt hierarchy” and discuss it with your colleagues. If you are meeting with a colleague and your smartphone buzzes, your desk phone rings, and someone knocks at the door, what do you do? Do you answer the call on your smartphone while letting your desk phone go to voicemail, then answer the questions […]

  • Creating the Best Solution Requires Both Seekers and Finders – Which Are You?

    Finders don’t hunt for something, they try to figure out where it is and go there to find it. They narrow down the possibilities through careful analysis.  Not surprisingly, they are good at finding things that are lost. They like mysteries and puzzles as long as they have answers. They employ the deductive reasoning of […]

  • Five Secrets to Getting the Credit You Deserve and the Appreciation You Want

    1.  Become an expert appreciator yourself. Give others the credit they deserve. Catch them doing even small things that help the team. If your appreciation is genuine and timely, it will increase the frequency of the “appreciated behaviors” and at the same time demonstrate “appreciating people” as an important skill in itself. Appreciating useful contributions […]