Inc.com

A Conflict-Free Organization is Near Death. Really?

December 4, 2012

I saw an interesting post on Inc.com last week, with a title that was hard to resist: A conflct-free organization isn’t great. It’s near death. Hmm … there’s one to think about. It was posted by “serial CEO” Margaret Heffernan.  Margaret had spent a day at a Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution in London. Here’s [...]

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7 Steps to Practical Business Stories

July 13, 2012

Remember, stories aren’t just stories. They’re truth and promise and relationships established. They’re vital to business. There’s more truth in stories than in all the statistics ever published.  Geoffrey James posted How to Tell a Great Story on Inc.com last month, quoting Mike Bosworth of Solution Selling, and Ben Zoldan, one of his top trainers. So this [...]

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Only If You Don’t Say So Yourself

July 3, 2012

In 10 Ways You Should Never Describe Yourself, on Inc.Com, Jeff Haden makes an extremely important distinction. He writes: Here are some words that are great when used by other people to describe you, but you should never use to describe yourself.  For example: motivated, creative, guru, passionate, innovative. Jeff lists 10 of them.  I didn’t [...]

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Growing Your Business: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

June 12, 2012

This was more than 10 years ago but I still remember it well. I was walking to lunch with a friend and long-time business planning client talking about our growth at Palo Alto Software. We had doubled revenue in the previous two years. These were good times. But my friend had a warning:  Be especially [...]

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Real Business Planning Thrives on Uncertainty

March 3, 2011

How do business plans and business planning relate to maps and navigations and getting somewhere? What about the difference between a business plan, business planning process, and extensive planning? Why would you care? Consider this quote: That is not to say entrepreneurs don’t have goals, only that those goals are broad and—like luggage—may shift during [...]

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The Pull of Bloat and Feature Addiction

December 15, 2010

This one struck a nerve: This is by Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals, in How to Kill a Bad Idea earlier this month at Inc.com. He’s talking about how software and websites grow too big. The software grows. Version 2.0 comes along. It does more than Version 1.0. More features, more options, more screens, [...]

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