Category Archives: Improve / Turnaround

Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance – An Inside View of a Successful Turnaround and Culture Change

In Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? – Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change, former IBM CEO, Lou Gerstner, gives a first-hand account of how he led the turnaround of IBM in the 1990’s. I recommend the book  for businesspeople … Continue reading

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The McKinsey Way – A Strong Primer on Problem Solving

Way back in 1999, Ethan M. Rasiel (full disclosure: a business school colleague of mine) penned The McKinsey Way: Using the Techniques of the World’s Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business. In the book, Rasiel reveals the … Continue reading

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4 Basic (Often Overlooked) Steps to Operational Excellence

Achieving operational excellence is vital to ensure that your company executes and fulfills its strategic goals. As a result, companies have spent millions of dollars and countless hours on advanced programs such as lean manufacturing, six sigma, kaizen events, ISO … Continue reading

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Move Your Company Forward in 2012

Welcome to 2012! I remain confident that this will be the year that your company once again begins to soar. To help you with that I offer up six suggestions on how you can make a substantive change in your … Continue reading

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Business Turnaround 301 – Right People Doing the Right Job

In discussing business turnarounds, we have seen that the three fundamentals to turn a troubled business around are as follows: Understand Reality, Face Reality Focus, Prioritize, Plan (Less is More) Right People Doing the Right Job Today, we turn our … Continue reading

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9 Keys to Driving Cultural Change

After years of little growth, command and control management, and cost-cutting, the cultures of many organizations need rejuvenating and tweaking in order to thrive in today’s difficult and increasingly competitive business environment. But, changing culture is difficult. As Lou Gerstner, … Continue reading

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Three Hidden Truths about Change – Guest Blog by Howard Perlstein

For 14 years I have been a corporate trouble shooter, the one brought in to figure out what is broken, to tell people what is wrong, to clean up a mess, to get people through gut-wrenching change. My job does … Continue reading

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Three Ways Companies Bungle Change Initiatives

Recent consulting studies have re-confirmed that most performance improvement programs fail to achieve their stated goals and improve the business. These change initiatives are worse than “much ado about nothing”, as they divert attention and resources away from more critical … Continue reading

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Three Lessons on Business Change from Learning the Piano

Five years ago, I attended a leadership training class that ended with each participant giving a passionate speech about how they would do something new and different in their lives. My first two speeches stayed under 100 decibels and thus … Continue reading

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Switch (Chip Heath and Dan Heath)

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard: Chip Heath and Dan Heath This is an excellent book, which I recommend that you read. My notes are reasonably short and only give a flavor of what is discussed. Filled … Continue reading

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Business Turnaround 201 – Focus

In the blog, “Business Turnaround 101 – Let’s Be Honest,” we saw that the three fundamentals to turn a troubled business around are as follows: Understand Reality, Face Reality Focus, Prioritize, Plan (Less is More) Right People Doing the Right … Continue reading

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Business Turnaround 101 – Let’s Be Honest

“My business is in trouble. We are losing money. Customers are not buying. Morale is low. And we cannot seem to do anything right.” What then must be done? You have to turn around your business. But, how? On this … Continue reading

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Change – A Broad Overview

  Read the business magazines or the Wall Street Journal and change is, as always, a hot topic: “The world is changing faster than ever, so you have to change faster or you will become a dinosaur.” “People hate change. … Continue reading

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Quotes on Change

In some upcoming blogs, I will be discussing change and how to significantly change and improve your business. The three keys for change are the following: Understand Reality, Face Reality Focus, Prioritize, Plan (Less is More) Right People Doing the … Continue reading

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Good to Great (Jim Collins)

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Other Don’t:  Jim Collins Good is the enemy of great Complacency creeps in Good to great transitions do not happen via the following: Larger than life, celebrity CEO arriving to … Continue reading

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