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Browse every published article connected to Robert (Bob) Cannon, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to Robert (Bob) Cannon, or search within this exact expert archive.
Today it is snowing again and we are expecting another foot of snow on top of what has already been a record breaking year for snow. Sometimes the winter feels soooooooo long. Today I talked to the President of a client company. For them, business is down over 40%. I have talked to business ...
The most optimistic success rate I have run across for new product ideas is about 3%. In other words, 97% of product ideas never successfully enter the market. There are lots of reasons for this low level of performance, but there is a consistency around a few common mistakes that routinely ...
Energy prices are changing daily. The capital markets are in free fall. There is talk in Washington of nationalizing everything from Energy to Medical Care to the Banking System. Our courts have become political entities rather than judicial entities. Technology is changing so rapidly that a ...
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, has gone to the Best Seller list once more with his new book Blink. I don’t want to take anything away from Malcolm because he is a proven best selling author, but how does it happen that a book about decision-making rises to the status of best seller ...
A Book Review of “12” To my knowledge, the book “12 The Elements of Great Managing” by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter, PH.D. is the first of it’s kind to provide proof that the soft stuff of management really counts in business. Their findings are based on Gallup’s ten million workplace ...
From my earliest days in Sunday school, I have remembered the words that a wise man builds his house upon the rock and the foolish man builds upon the sand. For 50 years, I thought this probably sound advice for someone about to build a house. It never dawned on me that it might have some other ...
What are you going to do differently to make this year better than last year? Newspapers are going out of business on a daily basis. Television advertisers are leaving in droves. Radio stations are being forced to layoff employees because of declining revenues. Way back in the early 90s, the ...
My friend Joan Steidl was recently asked about her thoughts on the election. She responded, “We are living in a rapidly changing world. Both parties are offering old solutions that haven’t worked. What we really need are some new ideas.” Her words have haunted me. Our traditional semi-free ...
Hiring the right person is always a risky business, but as business improves there will come a time when you are going to have to add people to your organization. Virtually everyone of us has made a bad hiring decision at one time or another and we know the high cost of a bad hire. It is possible to improve our hiring successes by spending more time preparing for interviews with prospective employees. The following are three tips that have helped me improve my success rate. Tip #1.
Sales people are unique and working with them provides many challenges and if done right, many rewards. Successful sales people are all different and they have learned to leverage their best attributes to develop a unique selling style that works for them. Consequently, maximizing their performance is always more a matter of coaching than managing to help them achieve more than they could on their own. Here are some basic guidelines that may be helpful in motivating your sales folks to increase sales:
Guide for Visionary Leaders and Business Decision-makers. ¡V In the January issue of Taking Aim, I reported on the book Margin. That book triggered some thoughts that had been floating in and out of my consciousness for some time. In fact I had even created the topic “Cycle of Specialization” ...
“Change” has been the big topic of conversation for some time now. For the most part, the change that everyone writes about and talks about is economic change. There has been much written about the change from a manufacturing economy to a service economy and there has been much written about the ...
As I have studied a number of books on decision-making, it has been encouraging to find that academicians have validated my own experiences. One example goes back to a time, when I was working in a company that had an incredible product but some problems with delivering products on time. It was ...
In business, we generally measure customer satisfaction by our sales or market share. It seems fairly obvious that if a customer doesn’t like what we have to offer, why would they buy our product or service? In a sense, hospitals are in the same boat. If a patient isn’t happy with how they ...
There once was a Blacksmith who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. He eventually found his way to the heartland of America after trying his hand at several different endeavors. Somewhere along the way, he realized that his work would be easier if he had pliers that would clamp ...
Procrastination can be perpetual or it can be situational. Neither is beneficial and both require the same actions to resolve. Perpetual procrastinators know who they are. They need to follow the four steps listed below to establish a history of successful decisions and actions to overcome their ...
Over the course of my business career, I have witnessed many business successes and failures, including some of my own. I have seen intelligent, knowledgeable people with great business plans fail and I have seen others less well equipped seemingly stumble into tremendous success. There have ...
The CHALLENGE of leadership is CHANGE. A manager or administrator can keep the status quo, but it takes a leader to create change. Traditionally, leaders have approached change as addressing problems. They use problem solving skills and critical thinking. Most often it has been a top down ...
Last Year, I published “Taking Aim for Better Decision-Making.” At the time, I thought the bull’s eye tied in nicely with taking aim and with the canno I have in my logo. Little did I realize how useful this little graphic would become. I was also beginning to understand how ...
Launching a new product or service is an exciting time and it is possible to overlook something in the rush to get that product or service to market. I developed the following checklist to make certain that I didn’t make the same mistake twice. Hopefully it will keep you from making a mistake ...
This quote from “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens has many applications but recently came to mind after reading the following quote by Rick Warren, author of “A Purpose Driven Life”. “I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life..
This sounds like either a really dumb title or it might be something really deep. You are going to have to be the one to decide. It is a statement with wide applicability and yet the meaning has haunted me for years and always implied some deeper meaning. The first time I remember hearing it ...
Throughout my career, I have asked managers what they look for in hiring new employees. The single most sought after characteristic is a positive attitude. Knowledge can be learned but a positive attitude cannot be taught and is recognized as being critical for success. Yet, if attitude is so ...
Are you happy? Do you feel good about yourself and your life? Over the course of my 60 years, I have experienced great joy and great sadness in my life. As a result of my experiences, I have come to understand the words of Ellen Glasgow when she said, “Nothing in life is so hard that you can’t ...
This past week, my wife inadvertently drop kicked our toaster oven and caused it to experience a catastrophic failure. The toaster oven, the microwave and my grill are necessary to sustain life at our house if I have to fix any food. The toaster oven is great because it works well for just the ...
At a recent industry meeting, one of the speakers focused on Human Resource Issues. One area of particular interest to everyone there had to do with Hiring. Virtually everyone in attendance had made a bad hiring decision at one time or another and fully knew the high cost of a bad hire. The ...
Inventors are not marketers. A strong belief in their new product idea combined with little or no understanding of marketing causes them to look for an easy way to achieve commercial success. Sadly, many spend their time, effort and money on get rich quick schemes that drain them of resources before they achieve commercial success. Probably the most common get rich quick scheme is the Infomercial scam. A number of companies cater to inventors. They promise to present the inventors product to the market via an infomercial for somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000.
There are two kinds of businesses in this kind of economy. There are those who sit on the sidelines and wait for the economy to turn and there are those who scramble to make the best of the situation. I interviewed a number of companies to determine: 1) what are the biggest issues facing them in the last three months and 2) what are they doing about those issues.
My experience as an inventor combined with my work as a coach for inventors has resulted in the following 10 truths that every inventor needs to know. 1. New product ideas are a dime a dozen. (An invention’s value is directly related to how close the product is to commercial success.) 2. More ...
If there are seasons to our thinking, then December and January are the season when our thoughts shift to our values and possibly the reawakening and renewal of value based behavior in the coming year. As I look at our world and particularly this passing year, there are many good things to be ...
Decision-making is an age old problem. Eve took advice from a snake. Julius Ceasar took advice from a council of advisors even though they later stabbed him in the back. Kings, presidents and leaders of all types struggle with making good decisions. The 2004-2005 Teradata Report on Enterprise ...
This time of year, I like to look back and measure accomplishments for the year, celebrate my successes and plan what I hope to accomplish in the coming year. Sometimes it may seem like you have accomplished a number of things only to realize that you have not really made any progress. Success ...
The news media would have you think the jobs we have lost to China, India and other countries are the result of lower cost labor. They tend to blame greedy capitalists on moving production off shore to save a few pennies on the production of products sold in our markets. The unspoken truth of ...