September 8th, 2006
by Dr. Brian Higley
I love to ask the big questions in life. And the biggest question that I’ve ever asked myself is this: “What does everybody (individuals and/or groups of people) want?” That is the question I asked myself in the late 1990’s as I was founding my company, The Building Blocks to Excllence, and being trained as a Ph.D. level behavioral scientist at the University of Florida. Since I was surrounded by so many brilliant business leaders and psychological minds at the time, I decided to start asking that question to these accomplished people to see if they could shed any light on the answer to my question.
The response I received from almost every one of them was that there is no single answer. “Everybody wants something different, Brian; there is no one answer to your question,” was their almost unanimous reply. However, I’m a stubborn person when it comes to answering big questions, so even though all of these incredibly bright people told me that my pursuit would be fruitless, I still felt like the answer may be out there. So I continued my quest of finding the answer to this enormous question.
I began the pursuit of this answer via a combination of powerful resources, beginning with my own personal experience, interviews with other knowledgeable people, and so called “common sense.” It soon became apparent that these resources would get me only so far, since as I’m sure you know, everybody has a different opinion regarding what everyone wants/needs more of — and many of these opinions can contrast with each other (e.g., “quitters never win” vs. “quit while you are ahead”, “birds of a feather flock together” vs. “opposites attract”). Thus, it became apparent that I had to go looking for my single answer somewhere else; I then decided to delve deep into the research literature to find the answer to my question.
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August 31st, 2006
by John Spence
I have been jumping up and down on this topic for the past 6 months or so and finally this month almost every major business magazine is featuring cover stories or main stories about how dismal customer service is in America. No kidding – we all know it and live through it every day!
Another great example this morning: I stopped in at my dry cleaners to pick up and drop off some clothes. Last time I was there they had ruined a pair of my pants and gave me a credit for the cleaning bill (yep, they ruin a $65 pair of pants and refund me $2.43 for the price of “cleaning” them – wow, that makes me feel good!) – anyway, I asked the lady at the counter if she would apply the credit to the new “house” account I had just established the week before, to which she replied: “ I am sorry we don’t offer any discounts to people with accounts.” What? First of all this was a credit for a mistake they had made… but it also alerted me that I was no longer going to get the 15% discount I had received for the last 4 years because of a “special customer” program I belonged to.
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August 27th, 2006
by John Spence
In another entry on this blog you’ll see a list of key business strategies from a CEO I admire a great deal, Carl Rapp of Philadelphia Gear Corporation – an absolutely super company, very successful, with incredible employees. Now, with all of the praise I just heaped on PGC, let me introduce you to another leader and organization that I am truly impressed with. Skinner Nurseries is one of the country’s leading suppliers of green goods for the landscape industry – they sell trees, shrubs and plants – and they do it extremely well. The COO of the company is a very talented guy named Kevin Van Dyke, who is nearly obsessive in trying to understand and improve the business. Again, he has surrounded himself with a deep bench of the very best people in their industry and he works for great owners, but I also must give a ton of credit to Kevin for the culture, focus and success of Skinner Nurseries – he is definitely a driving force in the operation.
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August 23rd, 2006
by John Spence
An excerpt from John’s writing at: www.execubooksblog.com — a blog of leading business thinkers who review current business books.
In the past year I have been asked by three Fortune 100 companies to give multiple presentations on mentoring — does that tell you this might be an important topic?
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August 19th, 2006
by John Spence
For the past year I have been asking the same question to every CEO I spend time with and to all of the participants of my various seminars and workshops: “What percentage of the time do you feel companies that know what they are supposed to be doing (have a solid strategic plan, clear goals, specific measurable outcomes) — actually do what they are supposed to be doing?” The answers I most often get are… 20% or less! That is absolutely shocking. It means that many companies are losing as much as 80% of their productivity (at staggering direct and indirect costs) simply because their employees do not effectively implement current plans.
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