MandelblogÂ
Your Customers Know What Your Employees Wonât Say
Wordcount: 722 Time to read: 4 minutes
Your customers feel the cracks your people wonât tell you about. Employees see the problems first and stay silent, which can be deadly. This post shows you how to uncover the truth before it kills your business.
Your Business Canât Afford to Wait for Washington
Wordcount: 584 Time to read: 3 minutes
Today, the greatest risks to your business donât come from Washington. They come from the unaddressed gaps within your own walls: gaps that are highlighted when customers engage with your organization.
Racing Ahead and Leaving Ideas Behind
Wordcount: 542 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Itâs not about physical space, itâs about emotional and intellectual space. When time is short, itâs easy to push too hard and make people shut down. Thinking is hard work and takes time. Remember to allow space for people to think and process.
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Do We Need to Hire Ourselves?Â
Wordcount: 575 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Itâs bad enough when an organization canât take care of its own operational and maintenance needs. Itâs much worse when improving those activities are the very products and services being offered to its customers.
Engagement for Dummies: What, Why, How
Wordcount: 647 Time to read: 3½ minutes
Lots of people have lots of ideas about what employee engagement is. I know it's not about being productive or having an emotional attachment to the company. Engagement is often an ambiguous term. I passionately believe the most valuable asset any company has is its employees. Engagement is about making their work joyful.
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Women are better leaders
Wordcount: 479 Time to read: 3 minutes
If leadership is about emotional intelligence, decision-making, and managing people, then women have the edge.Â
Objective Risk Assessment & The Future
Wordcount: 325 Time to read: 2 minutes
Leaders often overlook the assumptions hiding within their organizations, which can create hidden risks. Challenging these assumptions is key to better decision-making and leadership. Use risk scoring and mitigation strategies to address them before they become problems.
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The Second Operational Imperative
Wordcount: 592 Time to read: 4 minutes
Long-term organizational success and sustainability require leadershipâs dedication to three operational imperatives. In this post, I explain consistency of performance, the second operational imperative, and why it's at the root of the highest, most perfect form of promotion, marketing and attracting new clients.
When marketing just don't work
Wordcount: 542 Time to read: 4 minutes
When I say sometimes marketing doesn't work, I mean it doesn't work when you think you know your customer better than they know themselves. This is not an existential issue, nor is it an issue of conscious or subconscious awareness.
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Customer Service Quality? Shmality!
Wordcount: 580 Time to read: 4 minutes
When it comes to delivering products and services, consistent levels of customer service outweigh all other aspects of the end-user experience. What makes a business stand out is outstanding customer service.
While there are many pieces to this puzzle, this newsletter focuses on three that are universal and foundational to building a sustainable organization.
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Who Empties the Trash?
Wordcount: 697 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Daily operations often demand more time than there is, and routine can be comforting. Over time, and without thought, the familiarity of routine breeds complacency that inevitably leads to costly bad habits and crippling assumptions.Â
Are you concerned about where your organization may be wasting resources? Do you know your organizationâs areas of weakness?
Whadddaya mean there's no spare tire!
Wordcount: 613 Time to read: 5 minutes
âPlanning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.â
â Sir John Harvey Jones
Struggling to survive in a world of constant change
Wordcount: 415 Time to read: 3 minutes
Businesses want predictability and dependability, i.e., no change, while the world is constantly changing. This creates friction. Learning how to manage the environment and maintain a sufficient degree of stability is an art most havenât perfected, much less realizing any need to try. Here, Mandelberg talks about how to do just that.
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Social Media: OK, so I was wrong ... again?
Wordcount: 621 Time to read: 3½ minutes
OK, so I was wrong. Social media can work. As Charlie Brown would say, AAUGH!
Iâve used social media grudgingly, expecting nothing, only to recently find proof of value. When a referral said theyâd listened to my podcasts, I knew I was screwedâit can work. Those podcasts launched our client/vendor relationship.
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Can your staff read your mind?
Wordcount: 385 Time to read: 2½ minutes
In the ever-shifting landscape of modern business, having a clear sense of direction isn't just an advantageâit's a necessity. If you know what you want your organizationâs present and future to look like, donât make staff read your mind. Document it.
Authentic Feedback
Wordcount: 760 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Getting honest feedback from staff is one of the most common complaints I hear from my âleaderâ colleagues. The problem is rooted in the reality that penalty-free environments rarely exist. Is it possible to create a penalty free environment in a business where the questioner is the boss (or someone who has control over the career of the individual being questioned)? No. Is it realistic to even try to create one? Yes.Â
Using purpose to combat cost-push inflation
Wordcount: 368, Time to read: 2 minutes
This post contains important information about cost-push inflation and ways to improve recruitment efforts. It also includes a special section where I talk about three dumb-assed words - a must read!
We need staff!
Wordcount: 833 Time to read: 4½ minutes
Tired of looking for staff and finding ten âmaybeâ candidates for every âWOWâ candidate? According to Einstein, doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If you want to get consistently better candidates (different results), you have to try something different. In this issue, Larry offers three concrete ideas.
Leadership is ... ???
Wordcount: 498, Time to read: 3 minutes
The debate over what makes a good leader serves no purpose and has no value. The right questions are, what are the attributes of the best leaders, which apply to my role as a leader, and how do I develop the ones I don't have. For some answers and guidance, please read more.
Confidentiality [CONFIDENTIAL!]
Wordcount: 723, Time to read: 4 minute
According to Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu, âConfidentiality is a delicate bargain of trust.â
Are you waiting for trouble?
Wordcount: 428, Time to read: 3 minutes
A business satisfied with its success that stops trying to improve screams "We're patiently waiting to be overtaken." and signals the competition to attack. Why would any business do that? Sadly, that's what most do. When times are good, a business has the time, money, and resources to work on areas of weakness and look for ways to maintain its dominance. That's when proactive changes should be made, not when times are tough and you have no choice. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The client who fired me
Wordcount: 668, Time to read: 3½ minutes
Sometimes the cost of not planning is negligible. Sometimes it's expensive. The ease and speed with which a lack of planning can become fatal is almost impossible to grasp or prepare for. When it happens, game over.
In Defense of Disruption
Wordcount: 810, Time to read: 4 minutes
Over the years, Iâve had the unfortunate opportunity to watch too many large and small organizations at the top of their game suffer. When they side-stepped disruption, they were outflanked by competition free from tradition or routine. Avoiding disruption for the sake of routine or tradition can be poisonous.
The Big P
Wordcount: 685, Time to read: 3½ minutes
Purpose, not Pandemic
âCan a business have a mind, a sub-conscious, a knack for predicting the future, reflexes faster than the speed of thought? Can a business have a spirit? Can a business have a soul? Can a business be alive?â
