How do you get a team of people to rally around whatever’s most important in your business? How do you get everyone to understand and focus on what’s going to make a difference this year (or this quarter)? One possibility is to use Thematic Goals as the foundation of your strategic planning process. The idea […]

A little maintenance can go a long way.  A few weeks ago it was clear some type of road work was going to be starting on a main street that leads to our neighborhood, as traffic cones and signs were being placed along this mile long section of 4 lane asphalt and concrete.  For those […]

Owning a business these days is an exercise in uncertainty. Sure we’re slightly better informed than we were last summer, but we still face a lot of unknowns when it comes to how things will play out this year. That’s a challenging situation on a personal basis, but it’s a huge issue for a business […]

In business it’s easy to focus on growth as the only measure that really matters. It’s easy to measure (especially top line revenue or number of customers) and it just feels good. But is that really the best thing to focus on? *Spoiler alert – probably not…! 😉 I’m currently reading the book Company of […]

One of the great things about a smaller business or a start-up is the feeling of teamwork you get (if you’re doing it right). Opportunities or challenges come up and it’s all hands on deck, with everyone chipping in to rise to the challenge. When you’re trying to scale your business, that level of teamwork […]

This is the time of year when a lot of businesses will carve out some time and do some strategic planning. But unfortunately many of those businesses will leave out the strategic part. When you think about strategy, you should be thinking about a cohesive response to an important challenge. Instead many businesses will throw […]