Effectively using your signals and data to affect great control when it matters most.

Achieve mastery in any discipline you put your mind to.

Evaluate where you are, and plan for where you want to be.

Investing is a skill that can be honed.

Navigating the nonsense and marketing to find the value in free valuation

Protecting your digital weak spots

Reopening with a plan for success

is your procurement process as refined as it can be?

When does a strength like trust become a barrier to growth? Most of the time, owners work on building trust in the organization. So why not trust all the time 24/7?

You understand the role of your contact center in your business, but it is frustrating and sometimes feels like a black box that just drains your profitability. Your role as a leader is to set the vision for the customer experience your busines swill create to create and keep the customers. The “source” of your pain can be one of the most potent weapons in your offensive to deliver a world-class service experience. The contact center is no longer just the call center these days, because we should be including omni-channel solutions including email, chat, and social in your solution. Do not get frustrated. Don’t close it, use it.

As you may have figured out the hard way, managing large projects is different than small ones. Not just in magnitude, but in character and processes too. For this article, we’ll define large projects as those that involve more than five people, six months, and a material amount of investment capital. Of course, material varies by organization, so you’ll have to use your own judgment for that. Typical large projects include entering a new market, acquiring a business, developing and launching a new product, opening a new location, building a new facility, buying significant capital equipment and of course, and large IT projects.

As you may have figured out the hard way, managing large projects is different than small ones. Not just in magnitude, but in character and processes too. For this article, we’ll define large projects as those that involve more than five people, six months, and a material amount of investment capital. Of course, material varies by organization, so you’ll have to use your own judgment for that. Typical large projects include entering a new market, acquiring a business, developing and launching a new product, opening a new location, building a new facility, buying significant capital equipment and of course, and large IT projects.

This story begins with me on a redeye flight from San Jose to Columbus in March of 2000. I was reading Devil Take the Hindmost, a tome to be sure, about financial bubble markets. As the flight wore on, I couldn’t wait to get off and put in my sell order. But as I read, I looked at one of the charts and thought I remembered it from a book I had read back in the mid-90’s, The Great Boom Ahead. On page 34, it has a chart overlaying the U.S. births lagged by 46 years over a chart of the economy showing that in 2000 there would be a blip in the economy corresponding to a reduction in demand on the part of Baby Boomers. But, as the author warned, look out for 2007 when there would be a crash in the economy caused by the transition of Baby Boomers from family spending mode to the declining toward retirement spending mode.

It is safe to say none of us planned for COVID-19. At this time last year no one on the planet knew that COVID-19 would appear. This month we consider the fact that events do not proceed according to plan. And that there are actions to take in advance to limit the impact of unexpected events. Let’s take a look at Factors, Implications, Strategy and Tactics, or FIST analysis, to examine the various threats and responses for the organization.

I have been talking a lot this summer about CEOs and boards. With so many CEO transitions underway and with 2020 being a natural boundary line between one strategic planning cycle and another, I thought I would pull together a compilation of what I’ve been saying in one spot.

This month’s MBR touches briefly on the Q2 quarterly review including special considerations for the pandemic environment and then moves on to look at talent through the lens of bench depth and key personnel.

This month’s MBR touches briefly on the Q2 quarterly review including special considerations for the pandemic environment and then moves on to look at talent through the lens of bench depth and key personnel.

Before you say Lane is on a campaign, let me say that I realize circumstances sometimes demand a private fleet solution. For example, when you operate odd or specialty equipment that has little or no value outside of your business. However, it is also true that trucking and transportation in general, is a challenging business. Even good operators make what most of us would regard as slim margins. Further, it takes a balance sheet or asset mindset to operate efficiently, effectively and safely. And most of us are trained to think in terms of a P&L.

Recognizing that, I have asked Redbank Advisor Dan Carty to join me this month as guest writer as we look at how to think about your private fleet decisions.

Up until C19, I would have said the biggest existential threat to our clients was large systems implementation. Large systems implementations have brought two of our clients to their knees in the last 5 years and a poorly implemented system continues to plague a third client that cannot afford the capital investment to replace the ailing system. Since I’m sure you’ve read enough about C19, let’s look at an alternative to large systems implementation, diffuse IT.

What do Aretha Franklin and Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) have in common? They both innovated at a time well before the tide was perceived to be rising. Don’t think of this situation as the end of something. Turn that thinking around.