Leading Ideas

Have You Disarmed Your Customers?

Chip Bell recently wrote "Wired and Dangerous: How Your Customers Have Changed and What to Do About It." In it he describes just how lethal poor customer service can be in a digital age. Updated Fri May 27, 2011 .. Read More

The Financial Meltdown Was the Result of Too Little Risk

Excessive risk-taking has been the whipping boy for the financial meltdown over the last 3 years. On the surface I get it--executives at many financial institutions took on irresponsible amounts of leverage and got burned. However, something about this concept of these people being excessive risk-takers never made sense to me. Updated Mon Mar 7, 2011 .. Read More

Just Talk to Each Other--Frequently and Directly

I spent a day last week discussing some difficult issues with a leadership team I'm a part of--issues we probably should have discussed a while ago, but hadn't. As the day progressed it became clear that we had been avoiding quite a few conversations over the last year. Updated Tue Feb 22, 2011 .. Read More

It's Not Only How You Play the Game--It's Whether You Win or Lose

The old expression "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game" is flat out wrong. Winning matters. It matters because you achieve something important. But it matters for a much bigger reason also: It drives growth. Updated Mon Feb 7, 2011 .. Read More

Sustainable Innovation = A Culture of Smart Risk-Taking

One of the most pressing topics on executives' minds these days is innovation. Everyone is trying to figure out how to identify and commercialize the next big thing. Updated Fri Feb 4, 2011 .. Read More