Saving that bottle of great wine for a special occasion ... but each time, setting it aside waiting for the NEXT great occasion? Don't take time to visit special places and landmarks in your own city because you're busy now but soon, you'll have more time? The NY Times recently…
Getting the impression that I may have caught up on a little HBR reading over the holidays? What makes you think so? I did read The Power of Unwitting Workers recently, though, and thanks to so many of you for contributing ... unwittingly ... to energy conservation and other worthy,…
Have I given you anything yet for Christmas, or maybe to celebrate the New Year? Well, I have now. Consider this part of the Exkalibur Stimulus Package for 2010.
I don’t know about you but there are occasions … and they seem to be increasing in my case … when I feel a nap coming on … yes, during the business day, around 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. if you have to ask. Traditionally, there’s nothing we can do about it, hang in there, head for the coffee pot, slip out early, frog around on the web … something other than work. (more…)
For those of you attempting to follow the meandering health care reform debate ... gold stars if you have any idea where this sits today ... you might be interested in the recent Business Week article, Radical Surgery, about a hospital that slashes costs AND delivers high quality with innovative…
The Power of One concept is not new — it’s the bedrock of everything from motivational speeches to Army One.
There’s an entire industry devoted to the power we have over our destiny.
In the context of Building a Business, we can view the Power of One as a series of concentric circles that ripple outward from the center … from where we stand as business leaders.
[pullquote]“God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can’t and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Nieburh[/pullquote]
With a stagnant economy that has brought many businesses to their knees, we’ve been inundated with economic data, shards of doubt and glimmers of hope. While we can’t ignore these external forces, we can’t allow them to deter our commitment to reclaiming control of our agenda.
As a result, there’s no better topic with which to start than personal accountability, the singular touchstone of professional success over which we have the greatest control. (more…)
Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season. Make sure you spend time with family and friends – and remember that relationships are more important than consumption.
Seth Godin, blogger extraordinaire, has compiled an interesting and FREE PDF download from 70 diverse thinkers in which each person provides ONE WORD to identify an important concept for 2010 ... and then writes a single page to describe why they chose that word. From GENEROSITY to DIGNITY to POKER…
How about that for a double negative … meaning that “Not Not Important” is actually “pretty damn important”. Some of you took English, right?
What do I mean? Many of the followers of Sword Tips know that I’m a big fan of GTD, the “Getting Things Done” framework promoted by David Allen. He wrote recently in Wired magazine about one phenomenon that comes up all the time in my work with CEOs. If like most of us you’re always struggling with priorities, you need to read this. If you’ve got some ideas that have worked for you, share them.
By any other name, it’s the “it’s just not a priority” syndrome! God knows we’ve all got too much to do, and most of us have probably tried the 1-2-3 system of prioritization at one time … soon realizing that everything was becoming a “1” because it wouldn’t get attention any other way … and then we realized we made everything a “1” … and then we realized we ended up right back where we started.
There is no avoiding the pain that arrives like a SCUD when something that needs to get done doesn’t get any attention (more…)
As I’ve said here before, I don’t think our elected servants in D.C. know much about creating jobs. Let’s remember that the stimulus program was always “too little, too late” and we harped here that the length of time over which those funds would be deployed was way too long … witness today that jobs officials say more than 50% is still in the pipeline over one year later. So, no surprise it hasn’t help as much as they would have you believe. Robb Mandelbaum writing in the NY Times also agrees that there is very little in President Obama’s most recent speeches flowing from the Jobs Summit last week.
What do you think of the ideas being floated about, the key ones of which are summarized here? Will any of them help your business? Are there other ideas that could work? Fire up those fingers and add your comments here.
For one thing, the Administration continues to talk about incentive programs to spur business lending. While that would also be welcome, it doesn’t get at the root cause of unemployment and jobs growth. I’ve reported here before that lending is NOT the biggest problem in the middle market … it’s demand and revenue growth. Companies are not going to borrow except to meet demand and if demonstrable demand is present, borrowing is usually easier anyway.
One idea is to eliminate the capital gains tax for small business investing. (more…)