The Kresge Foundation is a great organization. They seek to strengthen other non-profit organizations by helping them to grow and improve their operations. It’s the philanthropic world’s version of the old Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish [...]
There are a number of ways to detect the “soul” of an organization. I like to look at the obvious external signs. There are a number of ways to detect the “soul” of an organization. Although it can be a lot of fun to get inside a company or group [...]
I was reading a very interesting note from Robert Scoble’s blog about business cards (Business card best practices) and it made me think. Many of the things he talks about are great advice, and some of them are very cool. A great example of “cool” is the famous card of [...]
I had the privilege joy chore of taking the flight from Seoul to Seattle a couple of days ago. If you haven’t had this fortune, it’s a 10 hour flight through 16 time zones where you arrive 6 hours before you left. I’m not a good sleeper on planes so [...]
With all the noise about the Hewlett-Packard board room scandal, resulting in the removal of their Chairman, Patricia Dunn, I wonder if it is making managers thinking about the spying they do on their own employees. Patricia Dunn Let’s be clear, I think what Dunn did was wrong. She got [...]
When the discussion of how to compensate and reward employees comes up, almost invariably someone comes up with the idea of the “employee of the month” award. Sometimes the name of the award is less tired, maybe it’s outstanding associate of the year. Or the top achiever of the quarter. [...]
I just returned from a board meeting that was challenging. It was challenging both in the issues that were being debated, but also in the behavior of one participant. I’ve been in hundreds of meetings like it, and it makes me want to scream. I love challenging subject matter. Nothing [...]
While on a plane for hours a few days ago, I found myself drawn into the inflight “entertainment”. Among some interesting fare (a classic Everybody Loves Raymond among other things) was the usual self-serving drivel from the airline, and a strange infomercial about a Marriott hotel in Florida. It was [...]
Ford Five Hundred SEL It’s a topic I cover at length in my upcoming book. Sometimes you can tell a great deal about a company from distance, without even crossing the threshold. I find it often in advertisements, press releases, and especially in products. Today I found it in the [...]
Wells Fargo Newsletter I’m a happy Wells Fargo customer. And they send me an interesting email every now and then called their “Small Business Roundup®”. It’s not a bad email newsletter, as these things go, so I generally give it a scan when it shows up. This week was no [...]
I found that I had to buy a mattress today. What fun. After a wonderful shopping experience at a number of discount places that didn’t have what I wanted, but whose employees sure had plenty of attitude, I ended up back where I started: Macy*s — part of the Federated [...]