Every time I go to a new city, I MUST make a pilgrimage to the local motorcycle dealership. Last week while in Scottsdale, Arizona, I needed a little service work on my BMW F800GS. The closest dealership was “GO AZ Motorcycles & Scottsdale Harley-Davidson.” I didn’t know anything about GO AZ, but I was blown…
DetailsFair, Fear, and Failure… I was inspired to write this article by watching A Christmas Story (for the 50th time at least!). When poor Ralphie accidentally uttered the “F” word, he brought down the wrath of Mr. and Mrs. Parker, ultimately getting a bar of soap in his mouth for his indiscretion. But it got…
DetailsMy best motorcycle buddy is Tom Myers, a partner at the law firm Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, headquartered in Milwaukee. I met him more than 25 years ago. In my first meeting with Tom as his client, he asked me a crucial question: “John, what is your goal for the business?” I didn’t really understand…
DetailsSo you want your people to make good decisions? One of our RESULTS.com clients asked me to recommend a process to would help his people make good decisions, even when he could not personally be there to advise them. The CEO travels a lot and wants to give people the freedom to make decisions in…
DetailsI am inspired to write this article today, because of Elon Musk and his incredible team at SpaceX. Today, April 8th SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk accomplished two incredible feats. First, they successfully launched 11 satellites into space on a single rocket, the SpaceX Falcon 9. This was followed by the successful landing of the…
DetailsGreetings from Nosara, Costa Rica! (Yes, I AM bragging.) It’s February 19th, I am sitting at a quaint and tiny local beach restaurant sipping a Mojito, appreciating a beautiful breeze off the Pacific, “feeling the burn” of a delicious 85 degrees, and watching the local fishermen negotiate the sale of fresh catch from their boats.…
DetailsA good friend, client, and TEC member, Tim Radtke, is the CEO/Founder of TSR Solutions in Milwaukee, WI. Tim has an excellent technology company and data center that helps companies create and sustain their critical technology infrastructure. The tagline for TSR is “Technology on Purpose.” Tim often jokes it should be “Technology on Purpose, Business by…
DetailsI am inspired to write this article today, because of Elon Musk and his incredible team at SpaceX. Today, December 21, 2015, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk accomplished two incredible feats. First, they successfully launched 11 satellites into space on a single rocket, the SpaceX Falcon 9. This was followed by the successful landing of…
DetailsOne of the concepts I really like from the book “Playing to Win” by A.G. Lafley (Procter and Gamble CEO) and Roger Martin is their strategy “sniff test”. I have found the sniff test to be a useful tool to quickly determine whether an organization understands what a “real strategy” is and whether or not…
DetailsMany companies claim to have a strategy, but all they have done is an exercise in goal setting. This is a mistake. Here’s how to create a “real” strategy. Research from the Harvard business school shows that (up to) 90% of strategies fail due to poor execution. This assumes your company even has a “real”…
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