Blog Archives

Confessions of a Craven CEO

In May 2012, I “challenged” my team to cut costs and increase revenue. Actually, I flat-out demanded that they do it. Because of my commitment to my company’s mission, vision, and values, I like to think I can be pretty

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Creating Opportunities to Deliver Value

We talk a lot about delivering value at our organization, and we do a great job of putting that into practice. However, there is a step that occurs beforehand that allows us to even get to that point: creating those

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The Performance Conversation

The performance conversation is the third of three critical conversations for supervisors to have with team members and prospective hires. The supervisor will first want to ascertain the team members’ commitment to and alignment with the organization’s values via the

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The Brazil Test

Does it ever occur to you that perhaps fewer people could easily do all of the work that your business requires? Certainly, one indication that the people-to-work ratio is off-kilter is when team members are sitting around waiting for work;

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A Management Compass: Using the Hoshin Star to Rank Priorities

Organizations always have a number of competing priorities, and determining which ones require our immediate attention can be a huge challenge. It’s impossible to tackle every available opportunity and problem in all areas at once, but if we rank our

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Delivering Value in a Service Organization

By Ralph Dandrea, Frederick Beer, Jonathan Coupal and Sean Flaherty Service organizations usually don’t become successful, and stay successful, by accident. More likely, its leaders have recognized what works and have assimilated those factors into its mission, vision and values.

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Commitment: All or Nothing

People tend to talk about commitment in fractions, as though we can be partially committed to something. But the purpose of making a commitment is to let someone know that he or she can rely upon us to act a

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The Values Conversation

The values conversation is the second of three critical conversations for supervisors to have with team members and prospective hires. At ITX, we are implementing these conversations across the board, with all of our team members, in order to align

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Rating Your Team Based on What Really Matters:

Values and Critical Behaviors by Ralph Dandrea, Frederick Beer, Jonathan Coupal, Sean Flaherty and Hernan Chiosso Determining a team member’s efficacy can be a daunting task. Traditionally, managers have relied upon their memories of recent events to critique performance during

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Introduction to Spectacular Service

A 7-Part Recipe to Move Clients from Anxiety to Joy When clients complain – in any industry, whether it’s service or product based, and whether it’s an internal client or an external client — our first instinct is to try

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