As Sewell and Brown said in Customers for Life, “You can shear a sheep for many years, but you can only skin it once.” As a general rule of thumb, don’t charge clients for anything in which you are not adding value. If you like this article, subscribe to our blog so that you don’t… [Read More]
Archives for February 2012
Bureaucracy: Enough with the Paperwork Already
Bloated bureaucracies stifle creativity, suppress ingenuity, slow down responsiveness, and crush aspirations. In organizations that are heavily bureaucratic, procedures are designed to meet internal requirements rather than the needs of the customer; politics—who said what to whom, who is gaining power, and who gets the credit, who the blame—overshadows everything, from clients’ needs, to inroads… [Read More]
The Costs of Poor Management
What are the costs of poor management? Plantation managers––now as in the days of the Old South––view people as disposable objects. To the plantation manager, there is nothing wrong with stealing talented people from well-managed companies rather than investing, nurturing, and training the company’s own employees. According to an article in Manage, it is not… [Read More]
Simplicity Wins. It’s That Simple.
Simplicity matters. It’s that simple. Measuring ideas by their complexity rather than their merit is inefficient and wastes time and money. According to Jim Harrington, author of Business Process Improvement, the virtue of clear and simple communication is evident in the complexity of the following documents: The Lord’s Prayer 57 words Ten Commandments 71 words… [Read More]
Company Politics Hurt More Than You’d Expect
How much time and effort is wasted due to company politics? How much time is frittered away grandstanding during meetings? How many e-mails do people write to cover their behinds? How much time is wasted trying to look busy? How much time is spent justifying yesterday’s actions rather than making today’s decisions? How much time… [Read More]