Tag Archives: Make It Happen

Don’t Be a Comfort Junkie

I just finished reading an excellent book, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self.  As written by Michael Easter, the comfort crisis results from each of us not doing anything uncomfortable: not exercising, never going … Continue reading

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6 Simple Expressions of a Good Leader

To be a good leader, we need to master and put into practice the basics.  The basics of good leadership start and end with how we communicate and interact with our teams and our customers.  I offer my list of … Continue reading

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Creeping Complexity

Anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes, “Complexity creeps up on you.”  Today, complexity has been creeping up and overwhelming us.  Within our companies and in our personal lives, we need to fight hard against this complexity to enable us to realize our … Continue reading

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Skin in the Game

In a previous job, I had around 100 salespeople who reported either directly or indirectly to me.  As a group, they were strong in sales.  But they lagged in paperwork, especially sales reporting and expense reports, and in doing any … Continue reading

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Field Centric

As leaders, we can get wrapped up in so many different activities and meetings – meeting with the finance, human resources or marketing department; talking to investors, banks and insurance companies; strategic planning; looking at acquisition candidates or joint venture … Continue reading

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Getting It Done: Achieving Twice as Much in Half the Time

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We Need to Create Time For Our Teams

Many of us aspire to personally be as productive and effective as possible.  We read articles and blogs (including some of mine – How to Be 10X More Effective…) and take classes to learn how to get more done in … Continue reading

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The Power of Active Follow Up

To make change happen effectively (for our companies and for ourselves) requires daily attention and regular follow up. People don’t get better without follow up.  So let’s get better at following up with our people.  The quote above is from … Continue reading

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5 Daily Behaviors for 2017

The calendar says 2017.  Unfortunately, far too many of our leaders are leading as if it is 5, 10, 20, even 30 years ago. Old-fashioned leadership and work styles and out dated, time consuming, and all but useless leadership behaviors … Continue reading

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The One Thing

In their book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest that a laser-like focus on the most important is essential to realizing success. Since the book dovetails so closely to … Continue reading

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Six Words for Leadership and Business Success

Success… A whole industry has sprung up around helping leaders and businesses get things done, make it happen, and be more successful. It is possible to spend thousands, even millions, of dollars getting advice from these consulting firms, gurus, and … Continue reading

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World Class Selling

The book, World Class Selling, by Roy Chitwood (founder of the Track Selling sales process) is an effective and insightful sales book. It is well worth reading for both new and experienced salespeople alike. Below I have summarized the key … Continue reading

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5 Ways Managers Can Make It Happen

In order to move our companies forward, we, as managers, need to get the right things done – the most important tasks that lead to success. This needs to happen in a workplace besieged by interruptions, distractions, and office chatter. … Continue reading

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The 9 Steps to Managing Our Stress

As business leaders, our lives are often stressful. Recent research confirms what many of us have observed; stress can harm our careers, endanger our health, and kill. In my career, I have witnessed: A boss retire early from his dream … Continue reading

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Lead With Questions

As leaders, we often have an employee come to us with an issue or problem. As “make it happen” managers, we then focus on getting the problem solved and getting it done as quickly as possible. Thus, we take charge, … Continue reading

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6 Steps to a Successful Team Project

Today, more than ever, employees need to be able to work in teams as businesses try to solve every more difficult tasks. Alas, many team projects start off with high hopes and ambitious targets only to end up with diminished … Continue reading

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We Must Impose Limits… On Ourselves

As business leaders, we are constantly being bombarded with distractions, new opportunities, and issues. Everything and everyone screams at us to do more. Yet, to achieve our goals, we must prioritize. By imposing limits on ourselves, we can better focus … Continue reading

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Recap – One Key to Help Move Your Company Forward

A customer interaction and a meeting are not truly finished until we take a moment to review and sum up what has just happened.   How do we recap? 1. In a customer interaction, we need to go over the … Continue reading

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Business Success by the Numbers

What numbers lead to business success? 0 – As in 0 /0 (zero injuries and zero accidents). In any company, the safety of employees and customers each and every day should be of highest concern.   1 – As in … Continue reading

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Building Accountability

A dirty little secret in business is that most organizations lack accountability at all levels from the leader to front-line management to individual employees: Assignments are not completed as promised Problems are left half resolved Phone calls are not returned … Continue reading

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