The Power of Punctual

Personally, I am not a fan of people who are always late. Sometimes, things happen that we have no control over such as car accidents, traffic jams, and unexpected family emergencies … to name a few. I am not addressing those.

Killing Ideas Can Hurt Your Future

So, you have called a meeting and there they all sit; Bias, opinionated, have favorites, scared of senior management, narrow-minded, open-minded, power seekers, egotists, young, old, seasoned veterans, inexperienced rookies, risk takers, and others who always play it safe. Then someone makes a suggestion and the games begin. The idea doesn’t stand on its own. Oh, no … quite the contrary. Unfortunately, most people “size up” the person who shared it. The definition of “sizing up” is, to examine something or someone carefully and decide what you think about it, him, or her.”

Creating the Perfect Team

Google has collected endless amounts of data and conducted countless studies, spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours, all in an effort to better understand their employees. One initiative was to try and understand what makes a team effective. Specifically, Google wanted to know why some teams excelled while others didn’t. The study was called PROJECT ARISTOTLE, and they gathered up some of Google’s best talent to try and understand, codify and decipher how to create high functioning teams.

I Will Never Do Business with You Again

That is a powerful statement and a very final one. What in the world could cause a customer to say that? I find it very confusing why companies persist in doing things that customers hate. No customer wants to hear, “We are experiencing unusually high call volumes.” What that says to customers is, senior management has failed to employ enough staff to properly service incoming calls. It didn’t matter what time they call the company, they will ALWAYS get the same message. A simple way to solve that problem is to quit doing business with them. 33% of Americans say they’ll consider switching companies after just a single instance of poor service.

The Art of Decision Making

Back in 1920’s the life expectancy for a U.S. Mail pilot was a mere four years. Flying in bad weather was proving to be detrimental to a pilot. In fact, of the first forty U.S. Mail pilots, thirty-one died carrying the mail. Something had to be done to change the attitude of the people who were making the “DECISION” of when a pilot should fly. The pilots worked out a deal with their field managers. They said they would fly in bad weather if the field manager would be willing to get in the co-pilot’s seat and take-off and fly once around the airfield and then come back and land. If the weather was so bad, that the field manager was too scared to comply with that rule, then the pilot would not take-off. The year this rule was made, 1922, U.S. Mail pilots had zero fatalities.

Great Questions Lead to Great Opportunities

Many companies were started because someone asked an innocent question. The invention of the Polaroid Instamatic Camera was triggered by a question. The three-year-old daughter of the inventor, Edwin H. Land, asked her father after he took her photo, “Why do we have to wait for the picture, Daddy?”