Here’s a thought. School’s never out for the professional. How does that make you feel? Excited or depressed? Continuous formal learning, whether in the university classroom or the corporate training room, is a necessity–not a luxury–for all of us. But […]
The company knew they had to do something. Customer satisfaction ratings were dropping, employee turnover was rising, and nobody wanted to talk about morale. Serious competition was looming. A group of leaders were appointed to do something about the situation […]
At one time in my life, I worked for a temporary agency. One of the assignments they sent me to was at a large manufacturing plant where my job consisted of answering the phone for a department. (Just a quick […]
Watching people as they enter the workplace at the beginning of the workweek gives you one view of organizational morale. Watching them as they leave at the end of the week gives you a different perspective. That’s why both questions […]
This question marks a change in the focus of our inquiries. Until now the questions have asked people to share the facts and information they know. Fact and information answers are important–in fact, business runs on them. But they don’t […]
If anyone is taking a vote on the most misused business word, let me know. I want to place a vote. The word team is often used to describe any group of people working on a task. Team, however, actually […]
This question is very specific, and it might not apply to you, but if you have any input on employee benefits or if you have responsibility for benefit recommendations or decisions, ask away. Over the years I’ve noticed a small, […]
Many organizations develop a list of values–conduct they uphold as their guide for the behavior of all employees. These values are often published and distributed. Too often, these values are thought to be real just because they’ve been put on […]
I can’t remember exactly where I heard it for the first time, but I do remember the general circumstances. There was a group of us seated around a table. Flipcharts covered the walls, and markers and half-used Post-it notepads littered […]
Your goal in asking this question is to determine if you need to work on the quality of the decisions you make or the way you communicate your decisions. These are two different things. You need to determine if people […]
One of the most often identified roles of a leader is that of barrier buster. Leaders get into trouble when they fall into a pattern of doing the jobs of the people who report to them rather than creating an […]
For years we have all joked and/or raged about the "it’s not my job" attitudes we’ve encountered in organizations, big and small. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if there is a customer somewhere who thought that way about […]
The nature of my work requires that I spend a great deal of time away from home. Time alone in hotel rooms provides fertile ground for unusual questions to surface. One evening I got to wondering how a hotel concierge […]
The best time to ask this question is when you’re talking to a customer. The next best time to ask this question is when you’re talking to someone on your team who regularly interacts with your customers. This is a […]
Every successful organization I’ve encountered, as a consultant or as a consumer, is passionate about their customers. When people in an organization hear their leaders at all levels talking about their customers at all times, it’s easy for them to […]
I don’t believe I’ve ever been asked this question. The closest I ever got was on a performance review form that had Where do you see yourself in five years? as the last question on the bottom of the last […]
Back to the money stuff. Well, one could argue that most of business is about the money stuff, but asking about the money often gets you to something more valuable. This question does that. Leaders ask this question to investigate, […]
Years ago I was a salesperson for a large insurance company. Sitting in a client’s office (an unhappy client’s office) I asked to use the phone to call the home office to get the answer to his very pointed question. […]
A simple question. "We sell things." "We make things and sell them." "We publish books." If you work in a retail or manufacturing environment, those answers should be pretty obvious. What if you provide a service? "We help people solve […]
This may be hard for male readers to understand, but when a woman moves, finding a skilled hairdresser is a critical, top-of-theto-do-list task. When I moved to northern Wisconsin, I asked for recommendations, made appointments with several of those people, […]