A simple way to understand strategy
Strategy is a hard concept to digest, especially for stayed institutions that have seen past success but have reached a growth plateau. New competitors are coming in, the organization has started to move slower, and sales are anything but impressive. They’re surviving, but not flourishing. Often, the first step is to refresh the “organizational strategy”. This comes in the form of a series of meetings, where...
Why organizations lie to themselves
As a leader, one of the jobs you have is to identify organizational gaps. Whether it be operational, resource-based, process-centric, or sales-driven. But what happens when you overlook or completely dismiss gaps that you know exist? Some might say that’s negligence, but the real question is, what’s the cause of that negligence? Is it laziness? Ignorance? Or avoidance? We all know (especially if you are on the front lines)...
February Gordon Report a new series: “You Can’t Click for Brains”
This new series explores the consequences of failing to recognize that maintaining and advancing computer technology is dependent upon raising the education and skill levels of more Americans. The widespread illusion that your electronic device provides all the data or answers you will ever need is causing many to question the value of obtaining a good education, when, in fact, it is human intelligence that produces technological...
Seven myths and mistakes to avoid when accelerating your business growth
As a business owner, you understand the importance of growth. Without it, your business may struggle to survive in a competitive marketplace. But with so many different strategies and approaches, it can be difficult to know where to start. Unfortunately, there are also a number of myths and mistakes that can hold you back from achieving the growth you desire. In this article, we’ll discuss four myths and three mistakes of the...
Combat rising IT security costs with IT Asset Management
Pity the poor Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). On one hand, their needs are real: emergent cybersecurity threats are increasingly sophisticated and numerous. On the other hand, the cost of defending against these threats follows the same trajectory. Every organization’s resources are finite, but not investing in the right technology or tactics could place the organization in the same inauspicious gallery as Hollywood...
What happens when a department has a bad reputation
We all know when two employees have a conflict, there are countless articles on how to coach and mitigate the situation. But what happens when departments have conflicts? In virtually every organization, there are teams that don’t work well together. It may be a rub between marketing and sales, or operations and production. No matter the departments, this rub impacts morale, culture, communication, productivity, and in the end...
How to build trust and expertise with After Action Reviews (AARs)
Do you lead your team to learn primarily from successes or from failures? Many leaders argue that their teams are just too busy to spend time discussing why a successful project went well. They just wrap up fast, then dive into the next project. So, the unspoken insights and unwritten lessons learned from that project rarely ever get shared or discussed. Often, they just get forgotten in the frenzy of working project after project....