As a business owner, I know that understanding your clients, customers, and other stakeholders is critical. To do this right, you have to ask the right questions and pay attention to the details. Companies ignore this at their peril. Take, as an example, these two...
Insomnia can make you a little crazy. If you're prone to it, then you know that there's nothing quite like flipping channels at 2:45 a.m. and discovering that your best options may be a slasher movie or the 20th iteration of LockUp Raw. So I thought I'd found...
Do you have what it takes to be a leader? And is this even the right question to ask? John Ryan, president of the Center for Creative Leadership and a former superintentent of the U.S. Naval Academy, has a great column in Business Week that posits that leadership has...
At least once a month someone asks me if I have expertise in their industry, whether they're building widgets for tow trucks or rockets for NASA. And it has always struck me as the wrong question. I can learn about you; don't you want to know if I understand what a...
TIME Magazine has a terrific article about how Twitter is changing us. It's well-written, and author Steven Johnson looks at Twitter not just as a fad tool for celebrities, but also as a platform that is changing how we are interconnected. A sample: But watch a live...
Have you ever wondered why a growing number of small businesses are investing time and resources into starting and maintaining a blog? My latest column for CW Bulletin is out, and the topic is blogging for business value. While there is no magic formula for business...
Have you ever beaten out a bigger competitor to win business? How did you succeed? Succeeding in business is all about understanding your competitive advantages and playing to them. For entrepreneurs and many small business owners, that can also mean leveraging...
Great interview with Wal-Mart Vice Chair Eduardo Castro-Wright about leadership and what they don't teach you in business school. The crux of leadership: trust. Leadership is "about being able to get people to go to places they never thought they could go," he said in...
My parents 50th anniversary is coming up, and to mark the event they're throwing a party for about 20 family members and close friends. The date's been on everyone's calendar for months, but my mom decided to send out more formal invitations. Now formal, in this case,...
Am I missing something? I really don't get all the handwringing among insurers and the pharmaceutical industry about a public health plan component to reform. One of the latest naysayers is Eli Lilly's CEO, John Lechleiter, who said that a public plan is "a slippery...