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Sales Diva
My mother is a sales diva. Whether it is selling homes, furniture, vitamins, makeup or water filters she brings a wholehearted (almost evangelical) passion to her work, and a genuine caring for her customer, that allows her to excel at whatever she lays her hand to. I didn’t always see this as a good thing. When I was in my teens she was bitten by the network marketing bug... -
True Marketing Starts with Employees, Ends with the Product
While delivering a series of leadership workshops across Canada, I was surprised by the response some well-known companies’ values, purpose and vision statements elicited … laughter. To elaborate – leadership participants were given this list and asked to choose which ones most excited or inspired them. Interestingly, many commented that they were inspired until they saw the organization to which the statements were actually accredited. An example of this... -
The Human Factor
At a recent conference on disability management I heard a true story that got me thinking about managers’ fear of dealing with the human element at work. The story, told by a vibrant gentleman in his fifties, concerned his role as the medical director for a division of General Electric in the mid-eighties. He was called in to investigate the evening shift at a plant that, with only fifty... -
Getting Out of Your Own Way: How the Initial Success Strategies of Leaders and Entrepreneurs Become their Achilles Heel and What to do About it
I enjoy being an entrepreneur because it allows me the freedom and flexibility to manage my time in ways that work best for me. Over the years, I have learned that it is not so much managing my time, as my energy, that has the biggest impact on my performance and the degree of fulfillment in my work. Like many entrepreneurs I started my business because I wanted to... -
Igniting Passion, Performance and Profits
What is a learning organization?
A learning organization is one that is committed to continuously re-envisioning all aspects of its business and increasing the capabilities of its people. Being a learning organization must be the foundation of any organizational culture that hopes to go beyond surviving to thrive in the 21st century high-speed, rapid change business climate.
A learning organization is a bit of a misnomer... -
Becoming You
Staying true to yourself is key to success, regardless of gender. Something unexpected happened just as I was getting ready to leave Japan after five fulfilling years of cultivating my business and my spirit there – I was offered a job. Having been an entrepreneur since my early twenties, jobs don’t normally tempt me, but this one was different. It was a leadership role, the money was great, it... -
‘Zen-Fitting’ Your Business With Right Livelihood
With businesses facing increasing scrutiny of their balance sheets, they often neglect the importance of intangibles – balancing life and work, building relationships, maintaining integrity and fostering social responsibility – that can ensure long-term sustainability and growth. In my 14 years as a career and business development consultant, “Right Livelihood” is the concept I have found that best guides people and organizations towards this goal to...
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Criticize By Creating
Life is filled with opportunities to complain and criticize. We witness it in both organized forms, such as documentaries and protests, and organic forms like customers complaining about poor service, employees criticizing their company’s policies, and bosses criticizing their team’s performance. Regardless of the form it takes, the results an individual gains from engaging in it are proportionate to the level of investment a person makes in the issue.... -
What if my dream job doesn’t exist?
With thousands of jobs listed in the National Occupational Classification Dictionary, the first question I would ask you is, “Are you sure it doesn’t exist?” Labour market research is a critical component of finding if and where your dream job can be found. So unless you’ve spent the time researching all of the different sources to find if your dream job is already out there, then...
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Branding With Integrity
Everyone has blindspots – those wonderful places where how we see ourselves lives in blissful ignorance of how the rest of the world knows us to be. Blindspots also exist in organizations – often as cultural blackholes of denial or virtual ostrich farms with heads stuck so deeply in the sand one wonders how they can even survive. Yet survive they do. Surviving, however, is not the same as...
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