http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:43:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en At the beginning of March, I embarked on what I considered a rather unique mission. After three decades managing the development and execution of corporate strategies, I would share the thinking and the experiences of senior executives. I was in a position to provide the somewhat different perspective of an ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/uncategorized/when-you-come-to-a-fork-in-the-road/ Years ago, I read a book entitled The One Minute Manager by M Spencer Johnson, M.D. and Ken Blanchard. I followed it up with The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. As I recall, I was younger at the time and I was pretty sure that, with just a bit ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/book-review/who-moved-my-brain/ My last post (Chaos Theory and the Economy) looked at the ripple effect of what might, to the untrained eye, look like isolated events and localized market dynamics. These ripples sweep outwards in ever widening circles, washing over near everything in their paths, capsizing anything not large enough or small ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/management/catching-the-wave-chaos-theory-hits-the-working-class/ "The field of consciousness is tiny", wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. "It accepts only one problem at a time." Would that the economy were so accommodating. The bad news keeps popping up as if the economy were a giant Whack A Mole gopher bash game. Well before the nuclear blast that was ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/economics/chaos-theory-and-the-economy/ People talking without speaking People listening without hearing. Remember those lines from Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence? Obviously, he had been to one too many company meetings. A quick corner-of-the-napkin calculation says that I have survived in the range of 7,000 meetings over the course of my career. Somewhere around the ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/meetings/meeting-expectations/ It shouldn’t be this tough. There is no company that has too many good people. So, if you interview someone bright, ethical and enthusiastic, someone with a good work ethic, someone whose training matches the position you are seeking to fill and whose attitude is a perfect fit with the group ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/human-resources/hire-aspirations/ There are a number of excellent books on corporate strategy that merit your attention and that will provide value for your time and for a twenty. There are, of course, others not so excellent, books that at my most generous I would consider hollow in content, penned by pop authors ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/strategic-planning/booz-provides-fix-for-strategy-junkies/ A few days ago, marketing maven Seth Godin made a wonderful observation: An inbound phone call is the ultimate in short-term permission. The customer or prospect is taking the time to call you. (See Who Answers the Phone?) Every marketer has been taught about contact points, where stakeholders’ paths, direct or ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/branding/hooked-on-phonics/ My thoughts on loyalty (as stated in my last post, Whose Bread I Eat, His Song I Sing) run counter to conventional wisdom which currently holds that loyalty between supplier and customer and between employer and employee are tentative at best, subject to change without notice and likely with little ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/management/loyalty-part-ii-circumstances-alter-cases/ A recurring theme from the corner office will be an argument that the foundation for all successful enterprises over the long haul is integrity. Integrity is a concept impossible to understand if you don’t have it and unnecessary to understand if you do. The cornerstones of integrity are respect, commitment, ... http://www.viewfromthecorneroffice.com/management/whose-bread-i-eat-his-song-i-sing/