Service: The Missed Opportunity

January 13th, 2012

You expect ser­vice, no mat­ter how it gets done, and when it meets your expec­ta­tions you are sat­is­fied. But what hap­pens when there are mistakes?

Most peo­ple under­stand that mis­takes hap­pen, and com­pa­nies usu­ally have a chance to redeem them­selves. Even so, ser­vice fail­ures seem to abound that leave a bad taste and weaken or destroy reputations.

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Keep Your Head Up

December 28th, 2011

At a recent meet­ing of the Build­ing Cham­pi­ons coaches, we were reflect­ing on things from our past that made us better.

My mind went to some­thing I had never shared with any­one before, about a huge mis­take I made that thank­fully had a long-term pos­i­tive impact on me. I was a sopho­more in my first high school foot­ball game. I can still remem­ber that moment when the coach looked at me. Since then I have always tried to be ready and keep my head up.

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5 Principles for Deepening Relationships

December 19th, 2011

It has been my expe­ri­ence that peo­ple make a huge dif­fer­ence in busi­ness. Their  atti­tude, their under­stand­ing of where you want to go, and their will­ing­ness to help you get there can be your great­est assets. As a man­ager and leader, build­ing strong rela­tion­ships with your team is critical.

I recently was asked to share my thoughts on deep­en­ing rela­tion­ships with the Build­ing Cham­pi­ons team. Here are the prin­ci­ples I passed along to them:

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What’s Holding You Back?

December 9th, 2011

What is really impact­ing your pur­suit of the results you want to achieve? If there is some­thing hold­ing you back in your life and cho­sen career, what can you do about it?

Cer­tainly the econ­omy — domes­tic and global — has impacted most of us, and will con­tinue to have a neg­a­tive impact for at least a few more years. But it is too easy to blame out­side influ­ences and avoid tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for what we need to do in order to reach our goals.

There are exter­nal fac­tors — includ­ing biases, prej­u­dices, reg­u­la­tory bar­ri­ers, and so on — that are out of our imme­di­ate con­trol. Yet there are things we can do that will improve our sit­u­a­tion if we per­sis­tently stay the course.

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Looking Forward to the New Year

November 22nd, 2011

There are all sorts of ways to approach plan­ning for the upcom­ing year. What has always been clear to me is that you need to have a plan. Your plan should be in writ­ing and it should be spe­cific, includ­ing the actions expected, who’s respon­si­ble, and when each step should be completed.

There are a few impor­tant “mind­sets” that will keep you focused on a cre­at­ing a plan that can help you achieve your desired results.

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Two Leadership Lessons from Ray Lewis

October 31st, 2011

Lead­er­ship wis­dom can be found in many places. And some­times, it is the sim­plest of ideas that can make a huge difference.

This was under­scored in a recent Mon­day Night Foot­ball game between the Bal­ti­more Ravens and Jack­sonville Jaguars. The game was unre­mark­able for the most part, but there was an inter­view that caught my atten­tion. Com­men­ta­tor and for­mer coach Jon Gru­den asked Ravens line­backer Ray Lewis about leadership.

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No Matter Which Way the Winds Blow, Lean Forward

October 17th, 2011

Prob­a­bly a decade ago I wrote a piece for the old Mort­gage Orig­i­na­tor about the need to lean for­ward no mat­ter which way the wind blows. Strangely enough I talked about volatil­ity and uncer­tainty. Times don’t change all that much nor does the mes­sage about lean­ing for­ward, or mov­ing for­ward if you like, no mat­ter the circumstances.

There is cer­tainly more than one way to look at change. A view could be that there was a per­fect win­dow of oppor­tu­nity to grow our busi­ness and we missed it. Now is not the time to take chances. Let’s do noth­ing or maybe even retrench. That’s one view but I don’t buy it. I never have.

Of course there are other views. Whether we are in the upside or down­side of a busi­ness cycle it takes def­i­nite action to cre­ate momen­tous results. We need to ask our­selves what will it take to move us for­ward now? No mat­ter which way the mar­ket winds blow, stand­ing still and doing noth­ing doesn’t usu­ally work.

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Asking for More, Achieving More

October 10th, 2011

The Build­ing Cham­pi­ons Expe­ri­ence a cou­ple of weeks ago was a mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence for all, and I had the oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss a sub­ject that is very impor­tant to me. I gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on “Set­ting Expec­ta­tions” — more specif­i­cally, ask­ing more of our team­mates and our­selves in order to achieve more.

Each of us has a ten­dency to set our expec­ta­tions too low. If you think you can’t do some­thing, you prob­a­bly won’t try hard enough. But often suc­cess comes down to exe­cut­ing the basics well – or at least bet­ter than others.

No mat­ter what oth­ers say or the fail­ures we may have had to date, with the right focus we can unleash the poten­tial within us. We need to think expan­sively, beyond what we have achieved in the past. We need to con­tin­u­ously move up the per­for­mance bar to do more and real­ize that potential.

There are eight prin­ci­ples that will help you to ful­fill your poten­tial – no mat­ter what role or life stage you are cur­rently in.

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Who Are the Real Experts?

October 3rd, 2011

To say there is much going in busi­ness today would be an under­state­ment. In many ways some of this would be amus­ing if it wasn’t so serious.

Take, for exam­ple, all the hear­ings going on in Wash­ing­ton, DC. This is impor­tant stuff – or at least some of it is any­way! Our econ­omy is “in the toi­let” (or “strug­gling” if you pre­fer). Con­gress is search­ing for answers.

Amer­i­can Banker (a pub­li­ca­tion that is not known for humor) in report­ing on a Con­gres­sional hear­ing stated, “Per­haps it was appro­pri­ate that a panel of pro­fes­sors tes­ti­fied Tues­day about how to reform the U.S. mort­gage sys­tem since Cap­i­tal Hill’s approach is increas­ingly begin­ning to resem­ble an aca­d­e­mic exercise.”

There is noth­ing wrong with pro­fes­sors, attor­neys, or con­sul­tants. But why not ask the peo­ple really involved in the activity?

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Building a High Performing Team

September 26th, 2011

At the recent Build­ing Champion’s Expe­ri­ence, I had the oppor­tu­nity to share ideas on how to build pro­duc­tive, high per­form­ing teams. In this blog’s lim­ited space, I can’t get into the same level of detail that I did dur­ing my pre­sen­ta­tion to this ener­getic group, so I wel­come your ques­tions and comments.

There are two key ingre­di­ents that are needed before you can begin to build a high per­for­mance team:

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