Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery

Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery:

Every business has customers who have departed.  There are a variety of reasons that prompt departure. How you react to the departure will either validate that they left for a good reason or begin the process of bringing back that customer and that customer revenue.

Follow these five steps...

What It Really Takes To Be Inspiring

What It Really Takes To Be Inspiring: What are the top three traits of highly inspiring people, and what can we learn from them?

What's Your Best Business Advice?

What's Your Best Business Advice?: "A strong mantra separates a good business owner from a great one."

Management: Develop Your Emotional Quotient

Management: Develop Your Emotional Quotient:

Management has changed over the last couple of decades. The old 80’s style of management and motivating people by fear has evolved and today’s management is a much more supportive, encouraging, inclusive and altogether more effective form of directing and developing people.

5 Ways to Lead with Emotional Intelligence -- and Boost Productivity

5 Ways to Lead with Emotional Intelligence -- and Boost Productivity: Employees today are much more aware of whether or not they are a good fit in their workplace culture and they want their leaders to be more mindful of their needs.   In general, employees have become more sensitive about how to best co-exist in a workplace environment that allows them to be who they naturally are.   Employees are tired of playing games and just want to be themselves.  As such, they are managing their careers and looking to advance by searching for jobs that truly fuel their passion, fulfill their desires, and ignite their real talent.   For most, today’s economic landscape has made the career management journey extra challenging.  And beyond career advancement opportunities, people want their supervisors and leaders to be more in touch with who they are as people (not just as their colleagues) to assure that their career track is in proper alignment with and  supports their personal and professional goals.

How to be a Great Manager that Employees Want to Work With

How to be a Great Manager that Employees Want to Work With: I recently spoke to Jill Geisler, who is the author of Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know. Her companion “Great Bosses” podcasts  on iTunesU have been downloaded 8 million times – and counting. Jill heads the leadership and management faculty of the Poynter Institute. She teaches, writes and consults on critical issues for leaders and counts among her clients The Boston Globe, CNN, and the Washington Post. In recognition of her lifetime contributions to journalism, the University of Wisconsin honored her with its “Distinguished Service to Journalism” award, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association named her to its Broadcast Hall of Fame, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences inducted her into its prestigious Silver Circle.

Six Ways To Save Face When You Are Caught Unprepared

Six Ways To Save Face When You Are Caught Unprepared: Nearly 60% of readers who responded to my recent informal poll said the main reason that President Barack Obama flunked the first debate was that Mitt Romney was better prepared.

How to Win Over Someone Who Doesn't Like You

How to Win Over Someone Who Doesn't Like You: Does your co-worker scowl every time you walk by? Is that guy in your networking group consistently aloof? Sometimes, for no clear reason, someone may decide they dislike you – and if you want a more comfortable work environment, it’s up to you to change the dynamic. So what can you do to disarm a cranky colleague?

3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker

3 Ways to Become a Strategic Risk Taker: Some people are fundamentally risk-averse, by nature. Others seek risk out to the point of recklessness. Culturally, we tend to think of this first group as the wise ones, especially by contrast to the wild ones. They are the ones who stick with one job, one spouse and one set of super-slowly maturing blue chip stock market investments for a lifetime.

Meet Your Virtual Mentor

Meet Your Virtual Mentor: I met John Spence a few weeks ago. He was smart, funny, generous with his advice and encouraging.

Employee Survey Success: The 3 A's of Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Employee Survey Success: The 3 A's of Employee Satisfaction Surveys: The employee survey (i.e., employee satisfaction surveys) should form the backbone of any employee engagement initiative. In my book, Employee Engagement 2.0, I explain how the first step to improving anything is to measure it, and employee satisfaction and employee engagement are no different. But too often, despite a considerable investment in time and money, employee surveys fail to move the needle of engagement. For your survey to actually drive business results, you have to follow what I call the “three A’s of employee surveys.”

Leading the Unmanageable to Do Amazing Things

Leading the Unmanageable to Do Amazing Things: There was no way Chris Lin could survive inside the Coca-Cola culture. So, I gave him a two-year unbreakable consulting contract and invited him to be our voice of truth. One of the best choices I ever made.

5 ways to avoid burnout at work

5 ways to avoid burnout at work: Here are a few methods, from simple coffee breaks to Panamanian CEO retreats, to avoid work burnout and recharge your business.

The 3 Secrets to Conflict Resolution

The 3 Secrets to Conflict Resolution: Good leaders are great at resolving conflict. Great leaders keep conflict from arising in the first place. Here’s how they do it.

4 To-Dos for Your First Year on the Job

4 To-Dos for Your First Year on the Job: When I started my first job out of college (actually, while I was still in college), the idea of working someplace every day for an entire year was a bit terrifying. Although my course schedule was always full, and I’d worked during school as well, I’d never had to clock a full eight (ahem, 12) hours in a row—and of the hours I did put in, none were under the watchful eye of anyone but myself.

How to Make One Better Decision Each Day

How to Make One Better Decision Each Day: Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm and Handspring, spoke on campus at Stanford University in 2009. He said that whether you run a dry cleaner or a tech company, if you could just make one better decision each day, you would end up dominating your industry.

How to Become the Strategist Your Company Needs

How to Become the Strategist Your Company Needs: Cynthia Montgomery is the Timken Professor of Business Administration and immediate former head of the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, where she’s taught for twenty years. For the past six years, she has led the strategy track in the school’s highly regarded executive program for owner-managers, attended by business leaders of midsized companies from around the globe. She has received the Greenhill Award for her outstanding contributions to the Harvard Business School’s core MBA strategy course. Montgomery is a top-selling Harvard Business Review author, and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, American Economic Review and others. She has served on the boards of directors of two Fortune 500 companies and a number of mutual funds managed by BlackRock, Inc. Her new book is called The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs.

Become an Opportunity Maker With Others

Become an Opportunity Maker With Others: Years ago, a board member brought me into a corporation to lead a team in creating two products that he felt would boost the stock price. Here's how it happened. In my vigorous interview of him for The Wall Street Journal, he described how the firm could fall behind without them, and I became fascinated by their capacity to scale. He read my article.

39 Leadership Points to Ponder

39 Leadership Points to Ponder: Are you doing what's needed to lead your staff and business to success? Consider these hallmarks, benchmarks and best practices of effective leaders

The Right Way to Ask for Help at Work

The Right Way to Ask for Help at Work: I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point in my career, I started to believe “help” was a four-letter word. OK, well, it technically is, but you know what I mean. Somewhere, I had picked up the idea that asking for help was tantamount to admitting weakness, and ultimately, failure.

Successful but dissatisfied? How to change your mind, not your job

Successful but dissatisfied? How to change your mind, not your job: I recently had a conversation with a friend who?s looking for a new job. This individual is highly successful, well regarded and, apart from the usual hectic business life, has not much to complain about. He just feels like something?s not right. My friend is a classic example of a mid-career prisoner: successful but not satisfied. Trapped by his own success and his healthy pay, he feels unfulfilled and dissatisfied.  Actually, what he needs isn?t a change of job but a change of outlook.

How to turn a weakness into a strength

How to turn a weakness into a strength: Richard Branson on the proverbial lemons and lemonade

The One Talent That Makes Good Leaders Great

The One Talent That Makes Good Leaders Great: It is easy to spot leaders: They are the people others follow.

5 Leadership Takeaways From Michelle Obama

5 Leadership Takeaways From Michelle Obama: First Lady Michelle Obama has been actively in the news for two things. The first would be her fashion sense. But the second and most defining are her leadership skills and community activism.

Barbara Corcoran's Secrets to Success

Barbara Corcoran's Secrets to Success: At the 2012 World Business Forum, Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran shared the lessons that helped her business grow.

7 Sure-Fire Ways Great Leaders Inspire People To Follow Them

7 Sure-Fire Ways Great Leaders Inspire People To Follow Them: Twenty-five years ago Santa Clara University Professors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner wrote The Leadership Challenge, a primer on how to make extraordinary things happen in organizations by helping leaders perform their personal best. Two million copies have been sold and an updated version of the book has just been released. Since the book helped to frame my own ideas on leadership, it was a pleasure to sit down recently with both Kouzes and Posner to talk about a topic I consider the most relevant to this column: how leaders can communicate a vision that gets people excited about going to work each day.

How To Reward Employees On A Tight Budget

How To Reward Employees On A Tight Budget: The past few days I was working with a wonderful group – the senior Legal and Policy team of a client company – and we were talking about how to foster an environment where “employees are happy to come to work and can achieve their potential.”  Someone noted that’s harder when money's tight - when, for instance, you don’t have the budget to pay overtime or give significant raises.  Which led to a great conversation about what’s motivating to people.  We all agreed that money is great (it’s hard to imagine employees saying no to more money), but that you can reward and incent people in meaningful ways that don’t involve financial compensation.

Why Are They Leaving?

Why Are They Leaving?: 5 symptoms to help you diagnose the causes of employee turnover

When You Just Don't Fit In At The Office

When You Just Don't Fit In At The Office: Three and a half years ago Forbes merged its dot-com and magazine editorial staffs, and we magazine editors got a dose of culture shock. We were used to coming and going as we pleased. We had few meetings. Especially in the mid- and upper-level ranks, we didn’t socialize together much. Having moved here midway through my career, from a nightly television show where I was by necessity joined at the hip with my colleagues, I loved the independence and freedom of the place.

3 More Career Lessons From The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women

3 More Career Lessons From The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women: Michelle Obama. Nancy Pelosi. Marissa Mayer. Lady Gaga. The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women 2012 list names 100 very unique and powerful women who have made an impact on society. Although these women come from different backgrounds and lifestyles across the globe, they all have one thing in common: they have achieved great success.

5 Essential Lessons for First-Time Managers

5 Essential Lessons for First-Time Managers: Last April, I applied for an entry-level sales position at my current company. It wasn’t my dream job by any means, but at the time, I had just graduated from college and was employed at an advertising agency I was desperate to get out of.

The Four Things Young Leaders Must Do to Effectively Lead Older Generations

The Four Things Young Leaders Must Do to Effectively Lead Older Generations: When I first became a department manager at 25 years old, everyone on my staff was at least 10 years older than me.   Thankfully, my parents taught me as a young boy how to effectively communicate with older people.  The first 15 years of my career I was faced with leading older generations.  How could I earn the respect and get ?buy-in? from those who didn?t always enjoy getting direction from a leader who was (in some cases) as old as their own children?    Managing older generations at work requires patience, the ability to listen carefully, and the knowledge that you must learn the old ways of doing things before you can apply your new ideas.

PROFIT W100: Getting Started

PROFIT W100: Getting Started: How W100 leaders became involved in their businesses

3 Questions To Help You Align Company Culture With Core Values

3 Questions To Help You Align Company Culture With Core Values: While walking a potential investor through my first company’s office, he suddenly stopped to take a few deep breaths. I thought something was wrong until he told me, “I’ve never felt such powerful energy!” As a 21-year-old entrepreneur, I had taken our company culture for granted until that moment.

There are Four Types of Professionals When it Comes to Business Development. Which One Are You?

There are Four Types of Professionals When it Comes to Business Development. Which One Are You?: Bruce H. Rogers and Russ Alan Prince are the co-authors of the just published book Profitable Brilliance: How Professional Service Firms Become Thought Leaders now available on Amazon  http://amzn.to/OETmMz

How to Stay Responsive

How to Stay Responsive: Higher sales and better retention await those who resolve customer issues quickly. Here’s how to stay responsive as more people ask questions and air grievances via social media

21 Ways to Win at Public Speaking

21 Ways to Win at Public Speaking: Public speaking is an essential skill — not just for CEOs and Oscar winners — but for each and every one of us. Whether you are asked to give a toast at a wedding, say a few words at a birthday dinner, nail a sales presentation, or speak to the student body, might as well shoot for the stars.

5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service

5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service: The pace of technology is ever-quickening. Feel like your business is struggling to keep up? We do-- It’s no secret that the online marketplace and popularity of e-readers have forever changed our business of bookselling. Whenever we feel the push of technology, along with getting the push we need to learn something new, we remind ourselves to focus on what has always helped us to stand out—our customer service.

3 Easy Exercises to Boost Your Creativity

3 Easy Exercises to Boost Your Creativity: These strategies will help you think outside the box to discover your next business idea.

Are Your Employees Engaged?

Are Your Employees Engaged?:

Want to know how committed your employees are? The real test of employee engagement, says serial entrepreneur and author Kevin Kruse, is ?discretionary effort.? Connecting through the Miami airport last October, Kruse ? author of the new Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance saw it

To Find Your Next Great Business Idea, Narrow Your Focus

To Find Your Next Great Business Idea, Narrow Your Focus: A winning business opportunity often isn't obvious at first. Successful entrepreneurs can identify new niches and whether they can be profitable.

How To Be A Better Leader In Just 5 Days

How To Be A Better Leader In Just 5 Days: What if you could improve your leadership effectiveness in only 5 days? No really – what if? What if there were no costs, no strings attached, no hidden agendas, no complex curriculum, but just a simple set of instructions for you to follow over the next 5 days that will change your world as a leader? Well, I have a 5 day leadership challenge for you which will do just exactly that – You in?

The Six Secrets of Self-Control

The Six Secrets of Self-Control: What is it about self-control that makes it so difficult to rely on? Self-control is a skill we all possess (honest); yet we tend to give ourselves little credit for it. Self-control is so fleeting for most that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed two million people and asked them to rank order their strengths in 24 different skills, self-control ended up in the very bottom slot (for the record, self-control is a key component of emotional intelligence).

5 Tips For Employers To Earn Respect From Employees

5 Tips For Employers To Earn Respect From Employees: In a previous blog (R-E-S-P-E-C-T: How To Earn Respect At Work), I discussed ways employees can earn respect at work. But earning respect shouldn’t be a one-way street – it should also be embraced by employers. Respect isn’t just something subordinates are forced to give managers. It’s a valuable asset for employers to show and earn in the workplace. Earning employee respect isn’t always easy, but when employers find ways to build respect at work, positive benefits ensue. How do you build employee respect at work?

The Worst Way to Set Sales Targets

The Worst Way to Set Sales Targets: Here's why a popular method for setting sales quotas is a really bad idea—and how you should set them instead

7 Goals To Help Your Startup Craft A More Targeted PR Strategy

7 Goals To Help Your Startup Craft A More Targeted PR Strategy: It feels great to be covered by the media, but unless there's a business goal for getting press, it often doesn’t lead to any useful outcome -- aside from allaying your parents' fears that you don’t have a real job.

A Simple Way to Get Any Point Across

A Simple Way to Get Any Point Across: This article is by Deborah Grayson Riegel, president of Elevated Training Inc., a communication skills training and coaching company. She is the author of Oy Vey! Isn’t a Strategy: 25 Solutions for Personal and Professional Success.

Driving Change Without Rocking the Boat

Driving Change Without Rocking the Boat: Whether promoted from within or recruited from without, executives in new roles had better be ready to drive change.The tricky part: knowing what to change--and how much.

Seven Keys to Adjusting to a New Boss

Seven Keys to Adjusting to a New Boss: Imation CFO Paul Zeller knows a thing or two about surviving in a cutthroat corporate world. Four different CEOs have come and gone since he has been CFO. The current CEO changed out every single person on the leadership team except Zeller. When I interviewed Zeller for my earlier article on Imation’s M&A tactics, I asked him how he survived.

CFO at 28: Career Advice from a Seasoned Professional

CFO at 28: Career Advice from a Seasoned Professional: For the inaugural “CFO Insights” column, I spoke with Ben Mulling, CMA, CPA.CITP, CFO at TENTE Casters Inc. and member of the IMA Global Board of Directors who earned his title of CFO at age 28. We discussed the increasingly strategic role accounting and finance professionals are asked to perform and the skills necessary to advance in the profession. For more advice on how to succeed in today’s marketplace, watch the extended video interview below.

What’s Your Endgame?

What’s Your Endgame?: Without purpose, you cannot build a business; you can only make a living. And that will have massive implications by the time it comes to sell

3 Ways to Operationalize the Extra Mile

3 Ways to Operationalize the Extra Mile: Stephanie Burns is the founder and co-owner of Chic CEO ? a free resource for female entrepreneurs. You can follow her on Twitter at @ChicCEO.

14 Things You Should Do at the Start of Every Work Day

14 Things You Should Do at the Start of Every Work Day: The first few hours of the work day can have a significant effect on your level of productivity over the following eight—so it’s important you have a morning routine that sets you up for success.

15 Surefire Ways To Please Customers

15 Surefire Ways To Please Customers: You have one way to grow: surround your customers with value. Here's how.

Everyone Likes a Compliment

Everyone Likes a Compliment: Moving people to action — whether large groups of people, or just one individual — is at the core of a professional communicator’s responsibilities.  

A Leadership Job Description

A Leadership Job Description:

When was the last time you read a leadership job description? We have job descriptions for every position under the sun, but I’ve yet to see one for leaders. Virtually every job description you’ll read lists “leadership ability” as a quality/characteristic/attribute that is valued, and in fact, most list it

Fifteen ways to keep startup staff happy

Fifteen ways to keep startup staff happy: What’s the secret for keeping employees at startups motivated? Here’s how 15 entrepreneurs respond

How To Turn Setbacks Into Business Breakthroughs

How To Turn Setbacks Into Business Breakthroughs: Everyone knows the saying, “When life gives you lemons, then make lemonade,” but have you heard anyone explain exactly how to make the delicious lemonade from such a sour lemon?

Advice on Company Building from Ben Horowitz

Advice on Company Building from Ben Horowitz: At TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Ben Horowitz of Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz was interview by Bill Campbell of Intuit, himself another giant of Silicon Valley. Ben Horowitz's blog is fantastic source of advice about scaling and running a company, especially in the enterprise space; I've been following it since he started writing. I wanted to share some of the advice and lessons that were brought up during the conversation on stage.

Five tips to delegate more effectively

Five tips to delegate more effectively: As your business grows, letting go of certain responsibilities and assigning them to others becomes a critical skill. Approaching it correctly may be harder than you think

Five Challenges For Tomorrow's Global Marketing Leaders: Study

Five Challenges For Tomorrow's Global Marketing Leaders: Study: This article is by Freddie Laker, VP of global marketing strategy, and Hilding Anderson, research and insights director, both at SapientNitro.

Want to Change the World? Define Your Organization's Attitude

Want to Change the World? Define Your Organization's Attitude: Successful organizations like Apple, Coca-Cola, the Red Cross and Ritz-Carlton all have a distinct attitude. For example, Apple leads its competitors in designing innovative products. Winning attitudes do not emerge by chance. Leaders aligning their organization?s strategy, posture and culture create them.
Attitude Defined
The components of an organization?s attitude include strategy, posture and culture. As examples, look at Apple, Coca-Cola, the Red Cross and Ritz-Carlton:

How to Triple Profitability

How to Triple Profitability: Research shows these five drivers of employee engagement are key to bottom-line success

How to Build a Competitive Talent Advantage

How to Build a Competitive Talent Advantage: How can your company attract and retain the best employees? Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation, says it’s crucial to recognize upfront that “our career model is hopelessly dated.” In many ways, the corporate world is still stuck in the 1960s and 1970s, she says, but both the demographics and the needs of the workforce have changed dramatically. So what are the most successful companies doing?

3 Things You Can Do To Change People's Behavior

3 Things You Can Do To Change People's Behavior: Getting people (yourself included) to change the way they act is tough. Here's how to do it.

What to Do With a Workplace Whiner

What to Do With a Workplace Whiner: Toiling alongside a chronic complainer can lower productivity and morale. Here's how to cope.

Picking a Corporate Leader: The Crucial Question Almost No One Asks

Picking a Corporate Leader: The Crucial Question Almost No One Asks: This article is by Gautam Mukunda, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and author of the forthcoming Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2012).

Adjusting to a New Manager? Try Putting Yourself in Her Shoes

Adjusting to a New Manager? Try Putting Yourself in Her Shoes: There’s an old saying that goes, “Great managers are made, not born.” OK, maybe the original refers to “great leaders,” but it applies to managers, too.

7 deadly sins of business growth

7 deadly sins of business growth: There are several underlying issues that make growing your company completely different from everything else you do in your business. But there's hope.

How to Get a Raise, From 4 Women Who Got One

How to Get a Raise, From 4 Women Who Got One: We’re told over and over again that women are too reticent, too lacking in confidence, too timid to ask for a raise.

5 Things Failure Teaches You About Leadership

5 Things Failure Teaches You About Leadership: As you reflect upon your career and future, step-back and assess your body of work and how it has impacted the manner in which you lead.    What makes you a stronger leader and provides you the perspective to cast a greater vision and help others achieve more?  It is the wisdom embedded within your failures.   Understandably, most people would rather not talk about their failures, but it sure does teach one how to manage adversity; for example, to understand why certain dots didn?t connect in their career, or why certain relationships or opportunities went awry.

60 Minutes to Clear Goals

60 Minutes to Clear Goals: Save yourself hundreds of hours by both doing things right and, more important, doing the right things

How To Give A Great Speech

How To Give A Great Speech: The late Steve Jobs? 2005 commencement address at Stanford University has been viewed more than 7 million times on YouTube. Seven years after he delivered it, a text version still flies around the Web. The speech is as powerful for its message?stay hungry, stay foolish?as it is for its structure and delivery. ?Today I want to tell you three stories from my life,? says Jobs. ?That?s it. No big deal. Just three stories.? And with that, viewers (and readers) are hooked.

The Impact of Mentors

The Impact of Mentors: Life and Business are hard and even the smallest measure of success requires the help of lots of mentors, friends, and family. For many of us, there is a very small number of people who have the most impact; that professor in college, that mentor during the first job, or that CEO who took an interest. When I reflect on my own career, it is easy to identify the two or three people who had the biggest impact for me. One of them is David Tisch who co-founded TechStars NYC and played an instrumental role in helping us develop and build ThinkNear from the very beginning.

4 Ways to Stop Making Excuses and Follow Your Passion

4 Ways to Stop Making Excuses and Follow Your Passion: How to know when it's the right time to start your own business.

How To Work Faster

How To Work Faster: In recent months, I quit a couple of regular gigs I had. I did this because, you know, why not? Life is short, and I'd rather be doing what I want.

How to Get Someone to Like You Immediately

How to Get Someone to Like You Immediately: If you’re meeting with a client for the first time or starting a new job, you want to make a great first impression. But aside from the obvious (be friendly, polite, and dress well), is there anything you can do to get someone to like you immediately?

Business Advice from 9 Successful Entrepreneurs

Business Advice from 9 Successful Entrepreneurs: These big names in business share the lessons they have learned on the road to success.

An Essential Executive Skill: The Ability To Manage Both Up And Down

An Essential Executive Skill: The Ability To Manage Both Up And Down: Many years ago, when I was a much younger lad, I had the good fortune to be a member of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and sail as a crew member of the Hokule'a, an ancient-Polynesian-style vessel, from Tahiti to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, a distance of some 700 miles, without using navigational instruments.

6 Leadership Tips from Jim Collins

6 Leadership Tips from Jim Collins: Though it has been more than 25 years, the leadership lessons I learned from Jim Collins remain pivotal to my life. Ordinarily, as Huck Finn might say, I don’t take much stock in “tips.” Human beings prefer the concrete to the abstract... However, there are exceptions to every rule, and Collins passed on a number of highly practical tips that I feel no qualms about passing on to you.

Managing Mental Health at Work

Managing Mental Health at Work: As more adults seek treatment for psychiatric disorders, companies appear eager to support employee wellness initiatives. But managers are wary of getting too deeply involved in staffers' private health issues.

Interviewing For A Job? The Number One Way To Stand Out From The Pack

Interviewing For A Job? The Number One Way To Stand Out From The Pack: You’ve placed all the right words in your resume. You’ve used all of your LinkedIn connections. And you have the interview. Want to stand out? Bring your passion into the room.

How Extremely Successful People Get Their Boss To Say Yes

How Extremely Successful People Get Their Boss To Say Yes:  Last time, we talked about the best way to sell your idea internally. But we sort of sidestepped the threshold question. You aren't going to have anything to sell, if the boss hasn't given the okay to give it a shot.

The 5 Essentials of Executive Excellence

The 5 Essentials of Executive Excellence: Whether you are a new entrepreneur or seasoned executive, your business will only perform as well as you do

What To Do When You Hate An Influential Colleague At Work

What To Do When You Hate An Influential Colleague At Work: Executive coaching clients over the years have come to me with a key dilemma:  “What do I do when I hate someone at work and feel he (or she) is out to get me?”

3 Lessons From Amazon On Delighting Your Customers

3 Lessons From Amazon On Delighting Your Customers: I just read that the e-commerce market in the US is expected to reach $226 billion this year.  Amazon's US sales are expected to be about $30 billion.  My quick math tells me that means about 13¢ of every dollar spent online in the US is going to Amazon.  Clearly, Jeff Bezos and company are doing some things very right. And it behooves all of us who are trying to make our businesses better to pay attention.

How a Promise Can Drive Your Business Forward

How a Promise Can Drive Your Business Forward: Brand isn’t just about ads and logos. It’s an underused tool that can boost your top and bottom lines

How to Negotiate a Raise When Your Boss Won't Ask

How to Negotiate a Raise When Your Boss Won't Ask: This post is written in response to an email from a reader. If you have a question, email us!

Five New Leadership Rules: Time To Get Real (And Transparent)

Five New Leadership Rules: Time To Get Real (And Transparent): Post written by Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, a provider of open-source customer relationship management software.

How To Drive Your Business Forward

How To Drive Your Business Forward: The one thing that can motivate your customers, employees, colleagues—and even you

Forbes Leadership Highlights of the Week: Everything You Do Wrong

Forbes Leadership Highlights of the Week: Everything You Do Wrong: Forbes Leadership was loaded this week with thoughts about what you do wrong and what to do about it. Carmine Gallo led off with "Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career: The Interview." Ron Ashkenas exposed "Seven Mistakes Leaders Make in Setting Goals." Erika Andersen taught us "How to Stop Being Too Complicated (or Too Simple)." She also learned some valuable "Lessons From a Bad Boss." Kevin Kruse took on "The Performance Appraisal: A Workplace Evil That Must Be Destroyed Like a Blood-Sucking Vampire," and Edward Lawler chimed in with "Performance Appraisals Are Dead, Long Live Performance Management." I caught a cross-section of a whole industry admitting guilt, in "Financial Executives: Sure We Lie and Cheat." Dorie Clark explained "Why Your Company Should Blow Up the Corporate Ladder" and pointed out "The Environmental Opportunity Your Business Is Missing." Don't let that all make you feel like a failure, though. The usefulness of failure is highly overrated, as Michael Tefula, courtesy of Brittany Binowski, told us in "The Failure Myth: Why Failing More Often Is Bad for You."

How To Find Your Passion

How To Find Your Passion: Just read a really useful and thought-provoking article on Amex Open Forum, The 3 Biggest Things Entrepreneurs Mistake for Their Passion.  The author notes that entrepreneurs often mistake the enjoyment of a hobby, the idea of a 'hot trend,' or the possibility of a quick financial gain for 'passion.' It's true - but it's not just true for entrepreneurs; I've seen lots of employees do the same thing.

How to Spark Creativity

How to Spark Creativity: Visionary strategies require ingenuity, but founders get so mired in execution they forget how to be inventive. Identify and remove these seven common roadblocks and harness the power of creativity

5 Ways To Ensure That Team Members Develop Into Great Leaders

5 Ways To Ensure That Team Members Develop Into Great Leaders: It happens every day. A stellar performer is promoted from team member or individual contributor to manager of a team. And nearly every day, that new manager struggles. They struggle because the job they are now doing is vastly different from the job they were doing, even though they stayed on the same team.

Play to Your Strengths: 3 Steps to Building a Business that Thrives

Play to Your Strengths: 3 Steps to Building a Business that Thrives: As entrepreneurs we are all engines of the new economy—in fact we create our own economy. Over the past 12 years my business has continued to grow consistently in profit and size, year after year, despite what the overall economy is experiencing. Please know, I don’t share this to brag by any means—but rather to inspire and share an example of what is possible.

Score a Promotion with These 11 Tips From Real Bosses

Score a Promotion with These 11 Tips From Real Bosses:
Have you ever been promoted?
If so, congratulations. If not, there might be something you can do about that.
And we don’t mean “be more confident” or “be more passionate.” We mean specific actions you can take to impress your superiors—and take home a bigger paycheck...

Make References Work for You

Make References Work for You: Job seekers need to strategize when selecting individuals to provide testimonials about their competence and character.

How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy

How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy: You can be your own biggest supporter - or your own worst detractor. Learn how to manage your inner monologue to make sure you're not getting in your own way.

Three Ways to Harness the Power of Your Intuition

Three Ways to Harness the Power of Your Intuition: For decades, the mandate of successful executives was to set a plan and stick with it. Those days are gone, says Grant McCracken, an anthropologist and author of Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football . . . Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough Ideas. “Capitalism used to be so analytical, precise, and rule-oriented,” he says. “The whole job of management was staying away from what was intuitive.” But the reverse is now true, he argues, and the most successful leaders are experts in adapting quickly and listening to their hunches.

Why Self-Awareness Is Crucial for Entrepreneurs

Why Self-Awareness Is Crucial for Entrepreneurs: Individuals building businesses will accomplish more if they understand what drives their decisions, Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck co-author Richard J. Harrington says