Customer Experience When Messages are Mixed 
 
I always wonder: Does senior leadership know what their customer is experiencing, or are they out of touch?  Do they get to hear the truth from consumers of their product or service, or do unhappy customers just say nothing and never return?
 
My husband and I recently took all three (young [...]

Busy and successful people find themselves getting ”hit up” for all sorts of fundraisers, and to be on boards of directors on a regular basis.  If you are reading this post, you are probably thinking to yourself ”No kidding, it happened to me three times last week.”
Here are some principles I’ve learned since I began spending 1/2 my time volunteering [...]

I’ve been re-reading Ben Franklin’s Autobiography for the “umpteenth” time.  In his long journey of self-improvement, he came up with his own 13 “virtues”, which I will list below.  This would be a great set of values for any company or employee! It comes from a man who was not of any religion, but established his own moral [...]

A Primer on Loss and Grief for Leaders
If you are running a company of any size, you hear about some relative or friend of your workforce dying almost every day. In even the smallest company, there is loss all around your employees. Loss you don’t see, and I am about to make you aware of. [...]

  This morning at our weekly MAC Toastmasters Meeting I was asked to give a short recap of my Saturday breakout session “Pumping Mental Iron”. One of the things I didn’t get to do on Saturday, since my time was shortened (read my last blog post) from 50 minutes to about 35-40 minutes, was to do [...]

I just arrived back home after delivering a breakout session on brainpower for Communicatiion ‘10, The District 7 Toastmasters Spring Conference at eh Oregon Convention Center. Because the introductory keynote ran a bit over, I had to cut our session short, so thought it would be helpful to post an outline for you, since we did rather race to [...]

The best book on branding I’ve read is “What is Branding?” by Matthew Healey. I recommend it be your reference book on branding.  Every graphic designer, product designer, artist, and business person should have a copy of this book and look through it regularly.
Branding is more than a logo, more than design, more than….listen to [...]

What does an executive performance coach really do?
 
People hire physical trainers for a number of reasons: perhaps to lose weight, build muscle, gain overall health, rehabilitate from an injury, train for a specific event, such as a triathlon, or work on a specific skill (as a professional athlete would).
 
Great leaders in business hire executive performance [...]

Those of you who know me know I don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t take drugs, don’t usually eat meat, work out on a regular basis, love hiking, used to be a ballet dancer, ran marathons, love yoga and Pilates, and so on.  At one place they used to call me the “Tofu Queen”, and for about 15 [...]

If a job could talk, what would it say about itself?
What would it say are the behaviors, key motivators, and personal skills necessary for superior performance?
 
Job Benchmarking is a process that tells you that very thing, about any position in your organization. 
 
80% of turnover is caused by bad hiring decisions, and a job analysis is the most [...]