Archive for May, 2009
Trading Up For Sales Stars
Even with massive layoffs, record bankruptcies, reduced work weeks, forced time off and dire forecasts, there is a renewed and thriving trade in star sales performers. Sure, some are already on the market. Those are easy finds. The real big wins come from poaching competitors and apparently, this has become big business for specialized recruiters.
The [...]
Invest In The Upside, Not The Risk
Entrepreneurs understand risk. Risk is simply the potential downside of a significantly larger potential upside. It’s a balance, with the scale tilted in favour of upside. That’s what makes the investment worth the risk. Over the past nine months, governments have misinterpreted the equation and ended up collectively investing trillions in the risk without enough [...]
Best To Avoid Bossnapping
By now you’ve probably heard of bossnapping. Not the sleeping kind of napping; the “you’re being held hostage until our demands are met” kind of bossnapping. It’s all the rage in France where over the past two decades employees have risen up French Revolution-style to sequester insensitive bosses against their will. Lately, incidents of bossnapping [...]
Why Marketing Often Gets The First Cut
There are so many conflicting predictions of marketing spending for 2009 that they’re not even worth listing, simply because they can’t be trusted. When different market research organizations post wildly fluctuating figures it’s because decisions aren’t being made or we’re not hearing the whole story. Both are true right now. What I am hearing from [...]
CEO’s Who Know They’re Not the Smartest People In The Room
Not every CEO enters the boardroom like a lion. Some do, but they don’t always offer much more than a loud roar or worse, they muscle their way through decisions that aren’t necessarily the smartest long term solutions for the company. Others, like Frank Blake, Chairman and CEO of Home Depot, approach their leadership role [...]