Monthly Archives: October 2011
When Trying Harder Isn’t Enough
When you’re investing in a new or growing line of business, excellent execution is critical for success. Also helpful are the bottom-up pro forma projections prepared by your financial people, which purport to tell you — sometimes with a clarity …
The 24-Hour Fallacy
The most value-producing things you do during the course of a day take place in a few minutes, or even a few seconds. You have a key insight, you motivate a key employee, you say just the right thing and …
How Tough Should You Be?
Leading people is tricky. On the one hand, you know you need to hire good people and then trust them in their areas of responsibility, without micro-managing them. At the same time, you are responsible for ensuring that: (1) The …
Who’s Your Brown-Eyed Girl?
Van Morrison’s 1967 classic “Brown-Eyed Girl” might be the all-time champion of targeted marketing, as more than two-thirds of all female Americans thought: “He’s talking specifically to me! That is my song!” Today, country music writers are the masters of …
A Strategy for Profit Growth in a No-Growth Environment
This week’s expert prognostications included, among other things: the inevitable demise of the Euro as a common currency, with devastating consequences for Europe; a further decline in US housing prices and a corresponding increase in under-water consumers; and of course …
