Execution and Results

New Year’s Resolutions

January 6, 2011

The new year begins.  Most companies, my clients included, have completed their 2011 plans. So now you’re back from the holiday break and focusing on execution. You’ve planned the results you want. Here are three New Year’s resolutions that you can make to help you get off to a great start on getting the results [...]

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Listening To Customers

December 20, 2010

Good article in the BNET Owners Only blog yesterday about the need to actually respond well to customers if you provide a feedback mechanism. He talks about companies acting like they care about customers, but when you scratch the surface a little, it’s just for show. Sad but true. Look at customer feedback from another [...]

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Everyone in the company adds value to customers

November 24, 2010

Too many people in too many companies believe that only some departments have a role in developing relationships with customers. The perception is that sales or marketing or customer service people are the ones that impact customers. Not field service people, or accounting folks, or other departments like those. They couldn’t be more wrong. When [...]

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Great article about how the recession made a small company stronger

October 18, 2010

A highly recommended article from the Feb 11 NY Times, entitled, “How the Recession Made Us Stronger.” The author recounts the experience his small company endured before, during and after October 2008 when the bottom fell out. He used what he called the “4 P’s” – people, positive cash flow, profits and positioning. And he [...]

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How do your customers view your value proposition?

April 2, 2010

When was the last time you talked to your customers about something other than selling them your products or services? If you’re like most CEO’s, the answer is probably something like, “Too long ago.” In this business environment, staying close to customers is absolutely critical. And, an important part of those conversations should be about [...]

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Great book on strategic PR

January 25, 2010

Jennifer Gehrt and Colleen Moffitt, who are the founding partners of Communique PR in Seattle, have written an excellent book called “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness The Power of PR.” They wrote this book based on a conviction that most of the “how to” books on PR are very tactically oriented. Their approach [...]

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When you put it like that it seems so easy!

January 18, 2010

Article on Ford Motor Company and CEO Alan Mulally yesterday in the newspaper. Mulally is doing a phenomenal job of bringing Ford back from the brink. For me the operative quote in the article was: “Mulally is relentless. He’s got a laser-sharp focus on a simple vision that he just drills into the organization.” There [...]

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Strategexecution???

May 20, 2012

I have been trying to come up with a term that captures one of the guiding principles of Upswing: The ultimate goal is results, therefore, strategic planning and execution are parts of a single integrated activity. Strategexecution is obviously a crappy name. But the idea behind it is not. In far too many cases, companies [...]

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