Everyone’s Thinking About the Economy We keep hearing about a possible recession, which makes small to medium size businesses (SMBs) in any industry understandably nervous. We forget that the economy cannot grow forever and that up-and-down economic cycles occur historically. With the eventuality of an economic downcycle, your business model cannot only be to operate in good times and wait
Targeted marketing of fabrication production capabilities can be the key to differentiated growth. In 1993, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers introduced a new concept that became the foundation for many of today’s marketing programs. Their book, “The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer At A Time,” has become a classic reference for personalized marketing and sales. One industry expert summarized
INTRODUCTION No one knows whether U.S. manufacturers will face a major recession, or a more moderate economic slowdown, in the next two years. The Federal Reserve cannot confidently project our economic performance over this period. ITR Economics, a private blue-chip company that makes its livelihood off economic forecasts, has projected an economic slowdown for 2023 for several years. In our
We’re into January, and, like many people, you may have made resolutions for things you want to accomplish in 2022. An estimated 74% of our population, or around 189 million people, according to www.finder.com, make New Year’s resolutions. You know the typical categories: weight loss, exercise more, new job, using time differently, etc. Like many fellow citizens, a week or
How many Pilgrims made the journey to America? Around 102 passengers, 30 crew What was the name of their ship? Mayflower What port did it leave from? Leiden, Netherlands What month and year did they arrive? Nov. 1620 (two-month journey) Name five last names of people from the first ship? Bradford, Cooke, Moore, Fuller, Browne When was the first Thanksgiving
There are various types of freedom: freedoms granted through our government and our constitution, including the freedom to practice religious beliefs of all kinds. This is one form of religious freedom…so important, in fact, that the first article in the Bill of Rights addresses freedom of religion. So, if we want to understand our constitutional freedoms, we should go back
Every business or not-for-profit has its version of a value system. There are often two types of value systems—internal values to which the culture and behavior of the organization conform and external ones, which represent the unique positioning of the organization relative to its customers, clients, or members. Let’s concentrate on internal values in this article. There are seven examples
Most organizations are struggling with effective management of both internal employee and external customer communications. Three things are clear: the impact of COVID is not going away anytime soon, businesses and not-for-profits were caught unprepared when COVID emerged, and what “work” looks like post-COVID will be quite different from our pre-COVID models. Before COVID, only 7% of the workforce was
Once you've built a team with the potential to be high-performing, the next step to ensuring their success is to empower them. Teams can still achieve great things with hands-off managers, but when we look back over time, trends suggest that the teams with leaders who empower and support them perform better than those without. Over the last two months,
Building a high-performing team is not an easy task. Numerous factors determine the team's success and not all of them are under our control from the get-go. But, there are four practices we can call on to make the process of building a high-performing team easier and more effective. Last month I introduced the biblical approach to building a high-performing